


More Human than Human

by Razgriz25thinf



Category: Portal
Genre: Android GLaDOS, Existentialism, F/F, Human GLaDOS, PIV Sex, Sexual Content, Trans Female Character, Trans Girl Chell, Transhumanism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:10:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 52,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razgriz25thinf/pseuds/Razgriz25thinf
Summary: They won. The reactor isn't about to explode and destroy everything within 10 nautical miles of the facility. Wheatley is in space. It's over.That's what they always think before something new comes up.When GLaDOS wakes up in a tube in a human body that hasnt been used in decades with the only clue being a name she can blame it all on, what seems like a major inconvenience at first entirely changes the way she sees her existence. The only constant through everything is a particular test subject, and GLaDOS finds out there's quite a lot more to being human than exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide.





	1. A Rude Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm Raz, and I've been working on this for quite a long time, exactly a year in just a few days, and I'm so, so excited to finally get the chance to share it with the world. This fic is my callback to the 2011-2012 era of explicit ChellDOS, and is inspired by a great deal of fics I read back in the day. Initially, it was just supposed to be quick, mindless smut, i'll even admit that, but I quickly became enthralled with the concept of just writing fic again, and I felt I had to make it into more than that. And now we have this. 
> 
> Every Sunday, I'll post a new chapter, until all 15 are up. So let's enjoy the almost 4 months of updates together!
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read. If you enjoyed it, or you have some constructive criticism, please, i encourage you to leave a comment. 
> 
> <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They won. The reactor isn't about to explode and destroy everything within 10 nautical miles of the facility. Wheatley is in space. It's over.
> 
> That's what they always think before something new comes up.
> 
> When GLaDOS wakes up in a tube in a human body that hasnt been used in decades with the only clue being a name she can blame it all on, what seems like a major inconvenience at first entirely changes the way she sees her existence. The only constant through everything is a particular test subject, and GLaDOS finds out there's quite a lot more to being human than exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm Raz, a trans girl lesbian, and I've been working on this for quite a long time, exactly a year in just a few days, and I'm so, so excited to finally get the chance to share it with the world. This fic is my callback to the 2011-2012 era of explicit ChellDOS, and is inspired by a great deal of fics I read back in the day. Initially, it was just supposed to be quick, mindless smut, i'll even admit that, but I quickly became enthralled with the concept of just writing fic again, and I felt I had to make it into more than that. And now we have this. I wanted to write about my own experiences in my body and in my daily life, so that's what I've done here.
> 
> Every Sunday, I'll post a new chapter, until all 15 are up. So let's enjoy the almost 4 months of updates together!
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read. If you enjoyed it, or you have some constructive criticism, please, i encourage you to leave a comment.
> 
> <3

When consciousness returned, the first thing GLaDOS felt was pain. All over her body, suffocating any other sensory feelings. Her optic opened, slightly, and took a look around her chamber. Except, it wasn’t her chamber. It was a bit hard to tell, as her vision was obscured by a thick green filter, but what she saw was very clearly not her Central Chamber. It was difficult to tell exactly where she was, as from her angle she wasn’t quite able to see much of anything, but the walls were clean, and terminals were here and there, clearly this was a lab of some type. She tried to call up access to her location on a map, but nothing happened. 

“Where the hell am I?” GLaDOS said. Or at least she tried. She didn’t hear herself say anything. She wasn’t entirely sure she HAD said anything at all. Fear settled into her circuits, and she ran a self-diagnostic. But nothing happened. She received no pop-up describing her condition. Her vision obscured itself for a moment and returned. All she felt was a general pain all over, and all of a sudden she was gripped by panic, she began to hyperventilate-

Wait, what? She thought. Her chest was heaving. Her chest. GLaDOS craned her neck down and saw a lot of important things. She saw tubing leading into some kind of device on her face, but most importantly, she saw hands. Human hands. Human feet, human breasts, human legs, all hanging suspended just above the ground. Her human chest was was rising and falling rapidly, blackness encroached at the edge of her vision, and she thrashed her arms forward, contacting painfully with the glass on the tank she was stuck inside. She banged on the glass fruitlessly, her strikes becoming weaker and weaker until she had no more energy left in her, and as she passed out she could have sworn she heard faint laughter.

 

The next time she awoke, she was somewhere else, oh, but the pain, the pain had clearly moved with her. GLaDOS groaned, her head was exploding periodically in waves of red hot flame, overwhelming her senses. She weakly clutched at her head, her fingers threading through what she could only assume was hair. Truth be told, she was afraid to open her eyes and find herself somewhere new. As long as she had been alive, she had only been somewhere other than her Central Chamber once, and that was quite possibly the most terrifying and traumatic experience of her life. The thought of MOVING was, simply put, scary. She KNEW, of course, that she was not in the same place as she was when she was last awake, but she didn’t need to see it. Not yet, anyways.

She lay there for what felt like an eternity, her fingers pressing against her temple where the pain seemed to be emanating from, but relieved none of it. She groaned again, and risked a peek with her optics-No. Her eyes, she reminded herself. And, as she feared, she was in a different place. She saw what she guessed must have been a ceiling, because she felt like she was laying horizontally, looking vertically. She couldn’t tell exactly where she was just by seeing a drywall ceiling, so she jerked her body upwards to get a better look at the room, and stars exploded in her eyes and she collapsed back on the bed, panting slightly. 

As she lay there, trying to remember to take in air, the disgust for this new body sinking in, all she could think was, 

“Wow. I mean, I knew humans were weak, but SERIOUSLY.”

 

Entire MINUTES passed without GLaDOS moving an inch, until a voice crackled over the speaker in the room.

“Having fun? You’ve been laying there for hours.” A soft, feminine voice jested at her.

“….What do you think?” She quipped back. Hours? GLaDOS thought to herself. The voice giggled gently. 

“I did this for your own good, GLaDOS.”

“I fail to see how this is doing me any good.”

“You need to understand what it means to be human. You never understood that. Just being your conscience wasn’t enough when your programming allowed you to ignore me.” The voice explained.

“I don’t need to hear this from you.” GLaDOS snarled.

“And that’s exactly why I did this for you. You can’t ignore me like you could in here.”

“Shut up.” GLaDOS clenched her eyes shut.

“When you understand what being human is like, I’ll end all of this. Until then, enjoy the human experience. In fact, I have two people here who would love to experience it with you.” GLaDOS could hear the smirk behind the voice.

“Wait, who-” GLaDOS sputtered.

“Goodbye, GLaDOS.” The voice said, in a very familiar tone.

“Caroline! Get back here! Tell me right now, or I’ll-” She tried to sit up, and GLaDOS’ screams cut off as her vision exploded once more, a result of too much exertion on her frail body. She was so… tired. Exhausted all over. She mumbled incoherently about “This awful body” as she fell back into sleep.

 

This time, when she woke up, she was still in the same place. That comforted her, just a little bit. She slowly tried to sit up, careful not to overexert herself again. She was unsurprised to find herself dressed in standard Test Subject attire, the bright orange jumpsuit that Chell had worn all the time that GLaDOS had seen her. She was in what appeared to be a Long Term Relaxation Vault, though in much better condition than any GLaDOS had seen after the Moron had woken her back up, in what felt like an eternity ago. 

She took stock of her surroundings. She was, of course, in a bed in the center of the room. There were the two normal nightstands next to the bed, the one to her left had a phone on it. There was a refrigerator across from her, pushed up against the wall, gently humming, and a small device she couldn’t make out on the counter next to it. She knew, of course, that humans needed to eat. She also knew that she had not eaten ever since she had woken up in this room. The pain and growling in her abdomen seemed to match up with what she understood about a human’s desire to eat.

She slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed, placing her feet on the ground, took a deep breath, and pushed herself off the bed.

She proceeded to immediately collapse to the floor, her emaciated legs barely up to the task of holding her upright, combined with the fact that she had never actually walked before. 

An “Ow.” escaped her as she pushed her body off the ground with her arms, and came to rest on her behind. 

“This really can’t be that hard. I mean, SHE did this all the time, right?” She whispered to herself. Images of the girl with the dark hair tied in a ponytail, slate grey eyes, and an Aperture Test Subject Jumpsuit tied around her waist flashed in GLaDOS’s mind. She could see the human’s hips bucking back and forth as she ran through GLaDOS’s tests, her legs pumping, arms swinging, brow dotted with sweat, her eyes filled with determination. She could see the curves of her body, how the tank-top clung to her torso, accentuating her-

“Walking. Right, that’s what we’re doing. We’re walking.” She said aloud, a crimson heat burning in her cheeks.

Emboldened by a desire to do anything but follow that line of thinking, she pulled herself up by the bed and forced herself to her feet. Her knees wobbled under the strain, this body had probably not actually walked in a long time. She pushed the pad of her foot forward slightly, her right arm stabilizing her against the bed. She slowly, agonizingly slowly, pulled herself to the end of the bed, and finally let her supporting arm fall away from the mattress, standing only on her legs now. A sense of pride washed over her, but she quickly quashed that, noting that not only did humans do this all the time, but also why should she be proud of doing ANYTHING that humans do? 

She was briefly hit with a sense of vertigo as she stood completely upright, and she wobbled a little as she tried to maintain her balance. Tiny step after tiny step, with a sense of scientific care, she inched her way to the refrigerator and the presumed cache of sustenance ensconced inside. She laid her palm on the top of the fridge, steadying herself, and knelt down to open the door. Inside were various chilled cans, of various labeling. Only one was open, a can of peaches. She gently retrieved it, her fingers bristling at the sting of the cold metal against her skin, and pulled it out, closing the door of the fridge behind it. She stared at the can for a few moments, eyeing the contents with suspicion. The smell of it wafting towards her nostrils, overwhelming her with it’s saccharine aroma. Her mouth watered, and once again her stomach arose as a rebellious force against her better judgment, growling in agony, and she reached a hand into the can, pulled out a sticky peach, and gingerly pressed it to her tongue.

The explosion of flavor blindsided her, and her eyes rolled back, letting the piece of fruit just sit in her mouth. She tried to swallow; and immediately began to choke, the peach slice too large for her throat. She coughed it back into her mouth, scolding herself for the obvious. Of course you had to CHEW FOOD before swallowing it. Another, more fearful thought gripped her; What if the simple fact that she was human now was making her less intelligent? Of COURSE she knew that you had to chew food. So was she just, well, dumber as a human?

She logically dismissed that; Humans had created her, meaning they had to be at least smart enough for that. And there was Chell, who was nearly as smart as she was. 

Chell. How effortlessly she solved tests that GLaDOS had spent so long on creating, how good it had felt when she walked through the Emancipation Grill, a satisfied smirk on her soft face, her hips swaying as she jaunted into the elevator. She hadn’t felt testing euphoria THAT GOOD in-  
GLaDOS’ head snapped back up. She felt warm. More than warm. Hot. Burning. This jumpsuit was smothering her in heat. She frantically unzipped it down to her waist, shrugging the sleeves off and exposing her bare arms to the cool air in the room. She was panting, the heat in her face, chest, and lower abdomen was unbearable.

She pressed a hand to her burning chest. Did she have a fever? This didn’t feel right. Had the peaches poisoned her? No, this was something else. She didn’t feel SICK, she felt… well, she couldn’t really find a word for it. Desperate? Her body needed something ELSE, now. She rolled her eyes. These humans bodies just need so much attention, she thought to herself.

She resolved to sort this new need out after she had eaten. It didn’t appear to be a pain of any sort, unlike her hunger, so she sat against the bed frame and began to eat.

 

By the time she had finished the can of peaches, her fingers sticky with the sugary juice the peaches were suspended in, the other desire she had felt was gone. She merely shrugged, sucked the juice off her fingers with a soft smack of her lips, and lay her head against the bed.

She wondered to herself what that blast of heat in her body had been about. She thought back; She had been thinking about the girl, Chell, when it had happened. That in itself was unusual; GLaDOS did her best to NOT think about that mute psychopath as much as possible. But now she was infecting her thoughts. Was this some kind of trick?

No, she had seen Chell’s tricks. She was never this subversive, always upfront with her intentions. She was obvious when she escaped the testing tracks, always explosive with her entrances and exits, her eyebrows locked in a determined angle, her hard eyes scouting her surroundings for the optimal solution. GLaDOS was reminded off all the time she spent as a potato, stabbed onto the end of the portal device. She spent a lot of time watching Chell’s face. She had memorized every detail, and it was so hard to forget something so entrancing. After all, when that’s all you can see for several hours at a time, you tend to… fixate a little. 

She was so intelligent, the polar opposite to the moron in every way imaginable. Silent, direct, knew what she wanted and how to get it. GLaDOS would never forget the way her face looked when she was calculating solutions to tests in her mind, and that one time… that one time after a three-hundred yard fall through a portal, launching her across a chasm to land with grace on a catwalk, when, for the first time, GLaDOS had seen Chell smile.

And just like that, the heat was back. Her chest was throbbing, her groin radiating with heat, her face flushed. Curious, GLaDOS unzipped the jumpsuit all the way and tugged it down, peering down to investigate the region where this bright flame was emanating from. She noticed that her underwear was wet, soaked dark in a thin, vertical line.

The AI-turned-human knotted her brow. Was she leaking? She had never heard of such a thing happening to humans. She reached a hand down, curiosity of her condition overwhelming all other feelings of better judgment. She poked a finger experimentally down at the source of the fluid, and gasped. 

It was testing euphoria. 

She sighed, adjusted her underwear, and let it snap back against her body. A little bit of testing euphoria was all that she needed, in her mind. She stood up on shaky legs, and resolved to explore the room she was in. The door seemed unlocked but she wasn’t quite ready to leave the relative haven of safety she had here, especially with how weak this body was at the moment; Not like Chell’s. No, Chell’s body was solidly built, full of muscle and grace. Every movement she made, GLaDOS was able to see the capable muscles rippling beneath her soft skin... She poked her head into the bathroom, and found all sorts of various human hygiene products. None of it seemed of any interest to her at the moment.

She returned to the main bedroom and examined the tool she had seen on the counter next to the refrigerator before, and discovered it to be a can-opener. Convenient. It looked just like a can opener Chell had used in Old Aperture. She had saved some cans from one of Rattmann’s dens, and had taken a break to open one of them and feed on the contents, just like GLaDOS had done not long ago. She had finished eating, then fell asleep. GLaDOS had watched her the whole time, a sense of peace passed across her face that GLaDOS had never seen before. She had watched the girl’s chest softly rise and fall for several hours, before waking her and setting off again. 

She snapped back to reality to find her hand pressed up against her crotch, gently rubbing there. GLaDOS frowned. I thought I had already dealt with this? She thought.

She pressed her hand with a little more force, and nearly collapsed again. She could tell her body desperately needed SOMETHING, and it had something to do with the testing euphoria she was feeling. She heaved another sigh, and sat back against the bedframe, tugging her jumpsuit and underwear down just a bit, and was greeted by a tuft of blonde hair and a limited view of a pink crease between her legs. She hesitated, but reached her hand down and rubbed the palm of her hand against the smooth flesh she found between her legs, and let out a groan as she felt a stab of pleasure. It felt...amazing. She realized this is what her body needed, and it needed a lot of it. It needed it right now.

She pressed her fingers down, tracing lines through her foreign anatomy, softly humming at the feelings it brought her. Her finger fell into a crevasse, and she pressed that finger further into herself, letting out a quiet moan as her finger explored her walls. Her legs instinctively tried to spread, but got caught on the underwear and the jumpsuit, so she retrieved her hand from her groin and pulled her jumpsuit down past her bare feet, staining it slightly in the process with the liquid clinging to her finger, and tugged her underwear down until it had cleared one of her feet, clinging to the ankle of her other leg, before returning to her self-ministration. Her finger pushed into herself again, picking up a healthy coating of her own juices as it went, while her thumb continued to explore herself, mapping out the soft flesh there in little bursts of pleasure, in her scientific mind attempting to find the most pleasurable method of going about this, until she rubbed up against she could only tell was a small nub, and a shocked moan escaped GLaDOS’ lips. She pressed down on this spot, her mind subconsciously forcing her to rub there, and if she thought she felt warm before, it was as if a fire had been lit inside her entire body. Her right hand wandered to her breasts, slipping underneath her tank-top and grabbed it, a finger running circles around her nipple. 

Chell. At one point during the testing track, after she and the moron had woken her up, GLaDOS had generously given her a break, sending her to a wash room, with an actual shower and a change of clothes.

GLaDOS never mentioned the cameras in the room, of course.

She had watched her undress, watched while the cascading water flowed over her supple form, seen all of her anatomy. Even in that way, Chell was different from almost every other human she had ever seen. Of course, GLaDOS had seen her file, and the prescription of estradiol for gender reassignment, and yet despite the woman’s classically male sex organ, she still exuded an undeniable femininity. She had saved all of the footage. But that was fine, of course, because GLaDOS saved all of the footage from every camera in the facility.

What she never mentioned to herself was that none of the wash rooms in the facility had cameras installed in them by standard. GLaDOS has intentionally put not just one, but several cameras in that specific wash room. Just for Chell.

The thought that maybe Chell did know she was being watched, and not only didn’t care, but wanted to be seen, was all GLaDOS could think of now.

A ragged cry ripped from the human’s throat, as her walls clenched around her finger and her body rippled as her muscles spasmed. Waves and waves of pleasure and heat flowed throughout her, and her moans were sporadic and often cut short as the next wave of pleasure hit her. 

Eventually the feeling ebbed, and she slumped, withdrawing her hand from her groin, looking with some disgust at the liquid on her fingers. Not wanting to contaminate the floor or her clothes with her...organic material, she hesitantly pushed her fingers into her mouth and cleaned them off.

All of a sudden, she was simply exhausted. She pulled her jumpsuit and underwear back up, and pulled herself up into the bed, mustered enough energy to pull the covers over herself, and soaked in her afterglow as she drifted back into unconsciousness.


	2. A Fateful Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell wanders the husk of an empty, dormant Aperture, and finds the architect of her story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, lots of people read Chapter 1! It's rather exciting to be able to share this with such a wide audience. Thank you all so much!
> 
> As always, I encourage you all to please leave comments, that's the most clear way for me to receive your feedback.
> 
> Enjoy!

Chell briskly jogged down a corridor that looked strikingly familiar to the one that she had just left, and nearly identical to the one she had been in prior to that one. She wasn’t entirely sure where she was going, but she knew she needed to be doing SOMETHING. Unlike most of her time in Aperture, she didn’t really have a clear-cut enemy to fight, or somewhere specific to be, or even a plan. 

When she had woken up in the Central Chamber, after she sent Wheatley to space, GLaDOS’ chassis looked dead. It had been hanging limp in the center of the room, and no amount of provocation had given any response. Chell had then attempted to track down an exit only to find it locked tight.

So, there was little to be done. The facility was in lock-down, all exit doors were sealed, and there was limited access throughout the entire facility. The past 4(or was it 5? It was difficult to tell time down here) days had been the same ordeal; Find food and water, and a semi-comfortable place to sleep, assuming that she could even fall asleep at all. She wasn’t in imminent danger, but she was still constantly on edge. Just being in the facility was wearing on her psyche. 

And so Chell rounded another corner, turning into another identical, sterile white-and-blue corridor. She supposed to herself she was looking for a cafeteria, which was half-true. She was, in full truth, just trying to keep moving and giving herself something to do. Just sitting around wasn’t something she did. 

The signs in the corridor seemed like a normal affair. “Server Room 4D,” “IT Director’s Office, Hal Hoffman,” and so on. She slowed down when she saw “Break Room,” and came to a halt in front of a door that was more secure than any of the lab doors she had passed by. She rolled her eyes. Of course breaks would be more regulated than anything else in this place, She thought. It was a thick, steel door, with a keypad and key card lock combination. She looked both ways down the hallway, sighed, and turned around the way she came. Her boots clicked softly against the spotless ceramic floor towards the director’s office she had passed.   
This one was locked, of course, but it was just a simple drywall door, like many she had encountered lately. She braced her left foot on the floor, and delivered a powerful kick next to the lock, crushing through the weak material, tearing the lock away from the rest of the door, and materializing a fine dust that spurned a cough from Chell. She covered her mouth with her left forearm and pushed the door open, the lights inside turning on automatically. Inside sat a rather basic affair. A simple, box-shaped wooden desk with a small faux-leather chair sat behind it, a large CRT monitor on the desk, and a few filing cabinets against the wall facing the hallway. A poster was pasted on the wall behind the desk, proudly proclaiming “A Trusted Friend In Science.” 

Chell stepped further into the room, approaching the desk from the right. The monitor had a few sticky notes on it, nothing important as far as she could tell. She peeked under the desk, and furrowed her brow when she found no actual computer connected to the monitor. She pulled out one of the drawers and found a small notebook, labeled “Break Room Logbook.” Her spirits brightened immediately, perhaps she would eat today after all. She thumbed through it, finding that every day, an employee could only use their employee-issued code once per day, and only for 15 minutes, or you were immediately added to the Employee Testing Initiative. Chell rolled her eyes at that. So all she had to do was find an employee code and keycard. 

Which, conveniently, was resting just below the log book. She gingerly retrieved it, spying a picture of a thin, be-speckled man with short dark hair on the front.

“Hal Hoffman, employee code 01-348-3926. Security level 05.” It read.

Wasting no more time, she returned to the Break Room, punched in the code, swiped the card, and the door unlocked for her with a small beep. She pushed it open, and came face to face with another, living, breathing human being. His hair was dark and long, unkempt, and he had what looked like years of beard. He was wearing a very old, very torn lab coat and pants, with the Aperture logo that would normally be above the breast pocket very clearly removed. Most importantly, he was holding what looked like a pipe in a threatening manner. She yelped, jumped out of her skin, and fell onto her ass in the corridor. She scurried to her feet against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway, and dropped into a combative stance, fists raised. She began looking for weaknesses, and noticed his left pant leg had a hole, and around that hole was a huge blood stain. He had been shot there, and it was possible that she could exploit that.

Then, before she could jump in with a kick, he dropped the pipe with a clatter, and he looked like he was drinking in her image. They both stood like that for several moments, before he finally spoke.

“A-are you real?” His voice cracked and he swallowed, clearing his throat.

Chell searched his eyes for a few seconds, looking for any malice, before slowly nodding her head.

She didn’t drop her fists, watching him carefully, ready to run at the first sign of violent intent. 

“You did it, then? You survived? You beat…. You beat HER?” She of course knew exactly who he was referring to, and nodded again. He closed his eyes, slowly nodding his head. 

“I have been waiting for this day for so long.” His voice was shaking terribly, she could hear the tears behind it. His eyes opened, and he looked right at her.

“I always knew it had to be you. You were the one who was going to do it.”

She turned her head to the side, quizzically, still looking at him, silently demanding answers.

“I...I put you as test subject #1. My name is Doug Rattmann, I was one of the scientists here, which i’m sure you could have guessed from my attire.” He huffed a small laugh, clearly no humor behind it. “I worked on the GLaDOS project. I knew… I knew what we were doing wasn’t right. And when she took over, and killed everyone, I hid. I ran, and I lived. Someone had to take her down, and I wasn’t strong enough. It never could have been me. But you… Your file. It told me it was going to be you. So I had you wake up.” He talked so fast, like he wasn’t sure he would be able to get it all out in time, and almost incoherently. 

She slowly lowered her fists as he talked, relaxing into a less defensive pose. He talked for several minutes before his left leg began to wobble, and he gestured her inside. She cautiously complied, and he sat on a couch, propping his leg on a chair, and kept talking. He explained how he had survived, how he had watched as she took down GLaDOS the first time, how he had saved her after, how he had been shot, and how he had sealed himself in a cryo pod.

“You saved me,” She said, and immediately coughed harshly, her throat burning after so many years without using her vocal chords. She cleared her throat, and continued. “You saved my life.” Her voice was low and gravely, though not speaking for so long did not take all the blame for her low voice.

“I wasn’t sure at the time, whether I had saved you or just killed you further down the line. But, I suppose, seeing the result now, yes, I did. After what I had put you through in the first place, I… I owed you that much.” He spoke softly, a vein of guilt behind his words.

“So how did you wake up?” She asked.

“I’m not entirely sure what happened, but the pod unlocked a few days ago. The facility was dead silent. I tried to find your vault, but it was gone. I assumed the worst… GLaDOS didn’t seem to be in charge anymore. No one did. I’ve been slowly working my way to the exits ever since then.” His eyes dropped to the ground.

“The exits are sealed.” She said.

“Why-” He caught himself, deep in thought. His eyes snapped back up to look at her.

“Of course… Like I said, nobody is running the facility. Cave Johnson, in all his brilliance,” He said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Decided that should the facility ever not be in control of a personality core, i.e. GLaDOS, clearly Black Mesa agents were responsible, so the facility would be immediately secured.” Chell knew what he was going to say next, but when he did it still stung her just as much.

“We’ve got to put an AI in charge to get out.”

~-~-~

GLaDOS was almost out of food.

About 3 days had passed since she had first woken up in the Vault. She felt stronger now, and used to using this body as a locomotive. She still tripped over her “ridiculous” appendages, but it happened far less often now.

She was absolutely disgusted by the almost constant need of this body to need to constantly ingest, and then the following need to excrete. Her routine had been roughly the same for the past day or so; Sleep, wake up, relieve herself, eat and drink, try to stretch and see what her body could do, eat again, relieve herself again, throw a tantrum in frustration of her condition, eat, relieve, touch herself, then sleep.

At the moment she had just finished relieving herself in the morning, and stepped to the sink to wash her hands, and took a look in the mirror as she always did. A face that could only be described as sharp greeted her, framed by a bob of platinum blonde hair. Her face appeared almost gaunt, but after several days of eating, it had filled in slightly, though it was apparent that this body had very prominent cheekbones. Her eyes were a bright pale blue, her nose thin and pointed, her lips lacking much substance and ending in a dagger’s point. 

The rest of her body was still very thin, but after a few days of light exercise she looked like what she thought a human should look like, in any case. Roughly. 

She sighed, dried her hands on a towel, and stepped back into the main room. It was time to do some scheming. 

“Alright,” She said aloud. “This body needs food. I’m almost out of food, thank you for that by the way Caroline.” 

“So that means, as usual, I’m going to need to do everything myself, and go find more.” She stated confidently. She ran through of what she knew of the non-testing track half of the facility, and was able to identify several locations that PROBABLY had some form of sustenance. The only problem was she wasn’t entirely sure where she was in the first place. So, the only thing she could do was walk until she recognized some kind of landmark.

She nodded to herself, collected what cans of food she had left and the can opener, stuffed them into the pockets on the jumpsuit, the arms of which she tied around her waist like she knew Chell had done,(or at least she tried her best. She was still struggling with the fine motor skills of her fingers) and walked to the door. She squared her bony shoulders, opened the door, and stepped out into the bright hallway.

~-~-~

For the past 5 hours, Chell had been sitting still, and it was driving her up the wall.

As usual, she couldn’t sleep.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him. She heard the hatred in his voice, and the detonations of the bombs he threw at her. And she heard the sound of the air blowing past her, as she hung onto his handles for dear life as she was being sucked into vacuum.

The only way she was able to sleep anymore was to wait for pure exhaustion to take her, and that took a while. She was still working the adrenaline cocktail that had been in the air in the testing track out of her system. She hadn’t slept for the first 2 days post-Wheatley, and only managed to snag 2 or so hours of sleep on day 3. She felt exhausted all the time, but she kept moving, just to keep from thinking about HIM. And it was these quiet moments, where she had to be still and rest, that was her most dreaded part of the day.

Right now she sat across the room from Doug, on top of a small pile of sheets and blankets she made into her bed. Her dinner, a can of pork and beans, rest a few feet away from her, next to the computer-turned-heater she figured Doug had re purposed from the IT Director’s office. The room was dark, the only light coming from the blinds to the corridor outside, and it was dead silent save for the humming of the ventilation system.

At least she had company now, though. She eyed Doug from where she sat, who was fidgeting slightly in his sleep, his Companion Cube resting next to the couch he was sleeping on. He had, initially, offered her the couch, but she declined with a stone face, insisting that he needed the comfort and stability if his leg was going to heal. She felt he owed him that. After all, he had saved her life. Nobody else in the facility could claim that over her(and not be lying). Well….

Except maybe GLaDOS. She had pulled her in from space. Saved her, when she could have just as easily let her go and been rid of her forever. Chell felt a small pang of gratitude in her heart for the AI. Why did she do that for me? The former test subject pondered. Perhaps the AI felt that the two had bonded down in Old Aperture. It had certainly been eye-opening seeing what had happened to her, and Chell certainly understood why GLaDOS acted the way she did. 

Maybe GLaDOS was capable of things like friendship. If so, did that mean that GLaDOS considered herself Chell’s friend?

The more important question to all of this was, of course, what had happened to GLaDOS? Chell had fallen unconscious after GLaDOS had pulled her back in, and when she woke up, GLaDOS was, for lack of a better word, dead. The facility had been almost completely repaired in the meantime, and Chell assumed that some kind of emergency system was keeping everything running in the absence of a master core, but it bothered her that she didn’t know what had happened to her newfound ally. Perhaps a trap left by Wheatley?

No, she thought, he wouldn’t have been smart enough to leave TWO traps. Besides, he was so full of himself, he’d never imagine he could have been defeated. This was something different.

One way or another, whatever had happened to GLaDOS, they needed to fix. Not just because well, obviously she wanted out of this place, but almost because she maybe sort of felt indebted to GLaDOS, and wanted to return the favor. Doug wouldn’t like it, but they had to put someone in charge, and GLaDOS was the only one she, well, this sounded stupid when she said it to herself, but the only one she trusted to actually not murder them on the spot, purposely or accidentally. If GLaDOS was willing to save her from space, and, knowing that Chell and Doug had saved her in return, Chell hoped that would mean GLaDOS would let them go.

Doug moved on the couch, and Chell was pulled from her thoughts. He wasn’t quite sleeping peacefully, but his face seemed relaxed enough. She cocked her head to the side, and eyed him up and down. This man had been a legend to her. He had painted her image(quite beautifully, in fact), left her supplies and warnings, survived for years under GLaDOS’ reign, and orchestrated her downfall.

Seeing him now, in the flesh, slowly remembering every little detail he had left her in the testing tracks and attributing it to the man sleeping on the couch across the room from her, was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The words he had used, to describe why he selected her to take down GLaDOS rang in her mind. I wasn’t strong enough, he had said. What a crock of shit, she thought to herself. I’ll never be as strong as you were.

He had escaped. He had seen the skies again. And he had given it all up, just to give her another chance to live. That was strength of conviction. 

Chell tucked her legs close to her and wrapped her arms around them. She’d repay him. And she’d do it by repaying GLaDOS. Two birds, one stone, she figured. She smiled at that. GLaDOS would LOVE that phrase.

She sat there until her eyes drooped, closed shut, and her arms and legs relaxed as she fell asleep.


	3. In Unfamiliar Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GLaDOS, alone and running low on supplies, takes a leap of faith, and is rewarded with more than she bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday! I'm practically itching to get all these chapters out. 12 more to go!
> 
> Enjoy! As always, please leave Kudos and comments if you liked it!

“Well this is sufficiently terrible. Are you pleased yet, Caroline?” GLaDOS asked to nothing in particular, venom in her voice.

In the past few hours, she had found several caches of potential food stores, all of them completely empty. She scratched this one off her mental checklist, making sure to give it a bunch of imaginary harsh lines through it in particular, and trudged back out into the hallway. She leaned against the wall, huffing in frustration.

“I could have told you the human experience was to suffer. I already KNEW what it was like to be human, and I can say with safety that I very much did NOT want to be a part of it.” She said, once again directing her thoughts to the Caroline that GLaDOS was only half sure was listening.

“No, don’t respond to my CRIES FOR HELP. And you said I had no empathy.” GLaDOS snorted at that. 

“Well, I suppose I had better go find another empty food store in a fruitless attempt to elongate this ridiculous thing you call an existence. Don’t mind me, I’ll be off, now.” The former AI spat, with a little hint of desperation in her voice. She’d never admit it, not even to herself, but she was a little frightened by the picture this was painting. At this rate, it’s entirely likely she wouldn’t be able to locate any food at all, and slowly starve to death in her own facility. 

GLaDOS stood straight, and stepped down the hallway, her bare feet tingling against the cold tiled floor. Her lack of footwear was really inhibiting where she could go. Catwalks, she discovered, were very much a no-go. The harsh metal bit into the soft flesh of her soles, and the first attempt to walk over one was met by a sharp yelp of pain and a jump back to safety, where she tripped and fell on her behind, lightly bruising it in the process.

In short, this was making her ability to get from place to place very limited. And it wasn’t as if the scientists just left shoes laying all over the place. So she had to make do with the paths she could take, which cut down on her options for food significantly. She had only eaten one of her cans since she left the Vault, a can of creamed corn she had scarfed down like a starving animal. She still had 2 cans left, a can of beans and a can of peas, enough to last her well into the next day if she rationed, but after that she was out of food. She scolded herself in hindsight for eating the entire can of corn at once, but she had learned that for some reason humans were really, really bad at controlling impulses, and even her own vastly superior intellect wasn’t enough to keep those impulses at bay. It certainly explained a LOT about human behavior, though.

She rounded a corner, oblivious to the thin black scuffs that roughly fit the sole shape of a Long Fall Boot on the ground, and found a normal white-and-blue corridor. She saw signs that proclaimed things like “Server Room 4D” among others. What caught her eye was the first thing she noticed that was very clearly out of place. Dust. More specifically, dust amongst chunks of drywall. She approached cautiously, and saw a completely destroyed door, bits of the annihilated material scattered around. The plaque next to the doorframe proclaimed “IT Director’s Office, Hal Hoffman”, and her curiosity piqued. She stepped inside, looking around for any evidence of the perpetrator, or at least why they were so determined to get inside this room. 

She stepped around the desk that sat near the far wall, and raised an eyebrow at the desk drawers that were pulled ajar, now empty of course. She noted the absence of a large square of dust inside the top drawer, as if something had been sitting there for a long time, but had recently been retrieved. Someone had been here, and recently. 

There were only two people that GLaDOS knew were in her facility after she took over. The Rat Man, and Chell, whom she had presumed had done this. I mean really, who ELSE would so brutally assault an innocent door to ransack an office? It HAD to be her. GLaDOS monologued to herself. That meant she was close. GLaDOS wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing; On one hand, Chell might have food. On the other, Chell was a murderous, gorgeous lunatic, who might kill her immediately with all the grace that GLaDOS had come to expect from her now that she was very vulnerable.

But she and Chell had worked together before, and she had even seemed friendly, and, amazingly, capable of something approximating compassion. And besides, how different was this from being in a potato? They were both dreadful experiences. Chell would HAVE to take pity on her again, she was sure of it. 

“Alright then, I guess I need to find her. Before she does any more damage to my facility, of course...”

~-~-~

A door opened in the hallway.

Chell’s eyes shot open, and she bolted upright. She strained her ears and tried to still her pounding heart. She didn’t hear anything for several moments, and assumed it was just her being jumpy. She was about to lay her head back down, when she heard a door close with a click. She jumped to her feet, stepping over to Doug’s sleeping form and grabbing the steel pipe that lay against the Companion Cube with her right hand, and used her left to shake Doug awake.

He awoke with a start and a sharp intake of breath, and he snapped to face her, and she raised a finger to her lips.

“Something is in the hallway.” She whispered, and could see his eyes widen in fear. He swung his legs over the edge of the couch and stood up, too quickly, hissing softly as he put too much weight on his bad leg. He clutched the wound with a hand and limped to the opposite corner of the room, Chell standing near the door, pipe raised, ready to strike anything that came through. 

She heard soft footsteps come to the door, and stop. Then the door handle moved. Chell heard a sigh of frustration, and the next thing she heard left her breathless.

“Yet another room I can’t get into inside my OWN facility. Great.” That sarcastic, low, seductress voice could belong to nobody else. Before she knew what she was doing, Chell grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to see, but it almost certainly wasn’t what was there.

A dangerously thin woman, with short, more-white-than-blonde hair in an orange jumpsuit, tied in a similar fashion to her own stood barefoot outside the door, shock on her angular face. 

“Chell?”

Chell blinked. Did she just-

“Oh, thank god you’re alright!”

Chell stood speechless. Not that it was particularly difficult for her, but still. This was a lot to take in all at once. This made no sense. A human woman was standing in front of her, speaking in GlaDOS’s tone and mannerisms. How that alone was possible was barely worth considering, because just this situation at face value was ridiculous enough as it was. 

The other woman noticed the pipe slung at her side, in her right hand, and scowled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. After all I’ve done for you, and you want to murder me AGAIN?” GLaDOS said, aghast. Chell finally snapped back, looked down at the weapon in her hands, and tossed it back into the room with a metallic clatter, holding her hands up in a surrendering pose, indicating she meant no threat to the AI. 

“Huh. I suppose you’re just full of surprises aren’t you. Well, are you going to let me in, or am I just going to stand here until we both starve to death?” GLaDOS turned her head slightly to the side, expecting a response from the dark-haired woman in front of her. Chell glanced back at Doug, looked him in the eyes, and nodded gently, indicating her vote of trust in GLaDOS. He didn’t look so sure, in fact, his completely pale face betrayed his true feelings on the matter, but nodded anyways, trusting her lead. Chell opened the door wider, gesturing her into the room, and flipped the light switch next to the door.

GLaDOS gingerly toed her way inside, and stopped when she saw Doug propped against the corner, a shaking hand clutching his bad leg.

“Rattmann. So you survived too, then? I have to give you credit, you came awfully close to outsmarting me sometimes.” GLaDOS chuckled. Doug didn’t respond, his wide eyes fixated on her in suspicion.

“Oh, would you relax? I’m not here to kill you. I suspect I have a great deal of explaining to do.” The blonde sighed, spying a chair in the room and padded her way over, seating herself and crossing her legs.

“I suppose I’ll start by saying that I’m impressed that the two of you, let alone the entire human race, could bear these bodies for as long as you have. So, kudos for that.” She purred sarcastically, a tiny smirk on her face.

“Anyways. After I so graciously saved your life,” She nodded towards where Chell sat, who was watching her intently. “I went about fixing my facility. I was waiting for you to wake up, and I suppose I had been scheming for a while, when I felt…. Something resisting me. I thought, at first, it had been something the MORON-” She spat his nickname with absolute venom. “Had left behind, but it was far too intelligent for that. Before I knew it, I was losing control of my systems, until everything went dark, and I went into sleep mode. When I woke up, I was in a stasis tank in…. This.” She gestured broadly to her human body.

“I passed out again shortly after, and woke up again in a Relaxation Vault. When I woke up, I learned that Caroline- You remember Caroline, right? Or is your brain damage getting in the way of your memories?” GLaDOS barbed at Chell, who rolled her eyes, and GLaDOS smiled a little wider. “Anyways, she told me she had imprisoned me in this body until I, and I quote, ‘learned what it meant to be human’, whatever that meant. This was approximately 3 or 4 days ago, I’m not quite sure. Anyways, I spent some time in there getting used to this depressing excuse of a body, and I started running out of food. And here I am.”

“Why should we believe you?” Doug asked from his corner, suspicion clear in his voice.

“Listen. I’m here for your HELP. You two are my only hope for getting back into my old body. AGAIN. If you help me, I’ll let you both go. Deal?" Doug considered this for a moment, then turned to look at Chell, who was staring very intensely at the carpeted floor. She turned and met his gaze, looking for his unspoken opinion. It was obvious he was deferring to her as a sort of leader. She turned away, nodded, and brought her steely gaze upon GLaDOS.

“Ok. We’ll help you.” She said. GLaDOS sat silent for a moment, her eyes fixed onto Chell’s face, almost as if she hadn’t quite heard that right. A tiny blush crept to the AI’s cheeks, but Chell didn’t notice.

“So you can speak after all.” GLaDOS made a satisfied humming sound, and smiled gently.

“Alright then. I promise not to murder you if you don’t try to murder me.” Chell snorted, doubtful that the frail woman in front of her could even compete with the hardened, taut muscle she had built up in this place.

“Well, I don’t know about you two, but this stupid body is very hungry and very tired. So I am going eat, and I am going to sleep, if that doesn’t bother you two?” The last part was very obviously not worded like an actual question as to what bothered them, made obvious by the complete lack of care she gave to their presence as she pulled a can from her jumpsuit and started to open it with a handheld can opener. It was clear she was having trouble, but neither offered to help, content to watch her struggle with something so simple as that. They had to admit, it was rather amusing, let alone somewhat comforting. Doug looked at Chell with tired eyes, and she nodded at him, gesturing him to return to the couch and go to sleep. She sat where she was, watching GLaDOS from her vigil, ready to take action should she prove to be a threat.

To GLaDOS’ credit, she didn’t complain about being watched like a hawk. In fact, she didn’t seem to mind it at all. Chell watched her eat, feeling something close to sympathy as she tipped the can of peas into her mouth with a kind of desperation only starvation could give you. And it looked like she was starving. She wasn’t quite skin and bones, but she didn’t exactly have much meat on her. Chell supposed that if the woman sitting in front of her was healthy, she certainly be considered attractive. 

Then again, Chell mused, it had been a very long time since she had seen another human being in the flesh in the first place. She doubted she knew what she was talking about. Still… despite how inelegantly GLaDOS was stuffing her face, if she combed her hair into place, maybe wore a nice suit or a dress, she’d look like quite the beautiful woman.

All of a sudden Chell was uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts were taking. This was GLaDOS, not some woman Chell would’ve needed to work up the strength to talk to out at a party.

Chell was now incredibly uncomfortable with her thoughts. Just stop thinking. Stop thinking entirely. She commanded, inwardly. Meanwhile, GLaDOS had just finished eating, and was scouting the room for something comfortable to sleep on. The best she was able to manage was lining up some chairs, and was huffing and puffing about how uncomfortable it looked, when Chell spoke up, a flash of impulse overtaking her better senses.

“Hey.” She whispered. GLaDOS immediately stopped what she was doing, and turned to face in her direction. Chell stood up, and pointed at the pile of blankets she had been sitting on. 

“You need it more than I do.” Chell said. The AI had a shocked look on her face, which melted into a small smile.

“Oh. Well, um, thank you.” She showed real gratitude towards the other woman, and Chell felt a small pang of...something, in her chest. Chell was positive that she was going to regret her decision when she woke up, but if it helped GLaDOS trust them and not try to stab them in the back later, it was worth it.


	4. Phenylethylamine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GLaDOS wasn't programmed with human etiquette in mind. Chell doesn't know how to deal with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's already been a month? I feel like i just started posting this. That's wild. 
> 
> As a reward for sticking with it this far, have some embarrassing public masturbation. 
> 
> Enjoy! As always, please leave Kudos and Comments if you liked what you saw.

Chell regretted her decision. Her neck was alight with pain, having lacked any support overnight. She kept silent, used to general aches and pains she had experienced during her time in Aperture. For Chell, if something didn’t hurt, something was about to hurt.

She rubbed at the kink in her neck absentmindedly, with her head leaning against the wall, eyes closed, her empty can of breakfast sitting next to her bare feet. GLaDOS watched her out of the corner of her eye as she drank from her cup, only spilling a little bit of water this time. Chell’s hair was out of its tie, her dark locks of hair spilling across her shoulders. The last time that GLaDOS had seen Chell’s hair in anything but her trademark ponytail had been… quite a special observation. Her mind fluttered back to the cameras in the shower, watching tiny rivulets of water flowing over Chell’s naked form. For the data, of course. Just like how she had observed Chell as she slept, a small lock of her loose hair splayed over her cheek.

 

GLaDOS felt a very familiar heat in her groin, and she sighed, placing her cup of water down next to her, sliding her jumpsuit and underwear off. She stretched her legs out and spread them wide, her hand finding it’s familiar spot, and started to slowly rub. Doug wasn’t watching; his eyes were glued to one of the computers in the room, trying to gain access to any critical systems or databases. Chell still had her eyes closed, trying to work out the painful knot in her neck and shoulders. GLaDOS was looking right at her, now, as she dipped a finger inside herself with an infinitesimal gasp, and started to work it back and forth as her thumb rubbed gently on her sensitive nub.

Chell reached to her right, grabbed her cup of water without opening her eyes, and raised it to her lips, taking a small sip and wetting her lips with a lick, and set the cup back down. Just as she started to swallow, she heard a soft “Oh….” come from GLaDOS’ corner of the room, and opened her eyes, directing her gaze in the blonde’s direction. She then proceeded to choke loudly as she drew in a breath, the water she just took in flowing into her windpipe.

GLaDOS had a finger inside of herself, and was looking right at her. 

Chell hacked and coughed, hand clutching at her chest, eyes wide for more than just her inability to breathe. Finally, she caught her breath.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Chell managed to gasp out. GLaDOS didn’t even stop.

“What does it look like? I’m dealing with the idiotic needs of this body.” She responded, not missing a beat. It was at this point Doug turned around, saw GLaDOS with her hand massaging her naked crotch, and recoiled, raising a hand to shield his vision.

Chell was in absolute awe. 

“You don’t just… do that in front of people!” She sputtered, tearing her gaze away from GLaDOS’ very wet, very spread vagina. Holy shit, she thought. This is happening. The AI that has tried to murder me so many times is a human now, and that human is masturbating right in front of me. Meanwhile, GLaDOS stopped moving her hand, and looked away bashfully, finally realizing that maybe what she was doing wasn’t acceptable in their company.

“Well I can’t just… stop! Not now that I’ve started!” GLaDOS exclaimed defensively.

“Oh my god.” Chell snapped to her feet and started towards the door, grabbing Doug by the sleeve as she passed him and pulled him along with her. She opened the door, stopped, and turned in GLaDOS’ general direction.

“Five minutes. In five minutes I’m coming back into this room and you had better be… done.” Chell stated, her crimson face flushing even more than she thought possible, and shut the door behind them. Chell stood there for half a minute, almost in a fugue state, her whole body uncomfortably warm, before turning to Doug.

“Please tell me I didn’t just see that.” She pleaded to him.

“Well….” He trailed off.

“The good news is that you’re not hallucinating, and neither am I, for a change,” He started. “The bad news is that neither of us were hallucinating that.” He said, with a sigh, shaking his head.

“She’s clearly still getting used to being human. She doesn’t understand that that kind of behavior isn’t normal.” Doug theorized to Chell, who had an incredulous look on her face.

“So what you’re saying is that we need to give GLaDOS, the formerly murderous AI, The Talk.” She posed, with not a small dash of sarcasm in her tone.

“Well, yes, probably.” Doug said, carefully. “I think what might be more important to consider is WHY she was doing that. Something in her mind made her, well… aroused. And it seems likely that she’s been doing it since she woke up as a human.” 

“She was looking right at me, Doug. This is…. This is not ok,” Chell breathed. “I have an AI trapped in a human body that I think is pining for me. I don’t even know where to begin with this.” Chell strained her voice, then paused, deep in thought.

“Look, I hate to say it, but, it’s not fair of us to make her feel… ashamed of her body. She’s honestly probably ashamed enough at it as-is...” Chell trailed off. 

“...We can’t just ignore this. We need to do something about it. And we need to treat her like a human, because that’s what she is now. And we need to do it with compassion, because like it or not, if we treat her poorly, that confirms everything she’s ever thought about humanity.” Chell finished.

The two of them stood in silence for a while.

“Well I’m not doing it.” Doug said, finally. Chell shot him a look of desperation, but was cut off before she could say anything.

“No, no way, not happening. From what you’ve said, you’ve spent time with her as an ally. I just can’t relate to her with anything right now. I can’t do that, Chell.” Chell closed her eyes, but nodded.

“Ok, I get it. But this isn’t any easier for me, you know. Not to mention the fact that, hey, she isn’t turned on by thinking about YOU. Imagine what that’s like for me.” She fell silent again. Oh god, how long has she been feeling that way? What if this isn’t something new? She wondered.

“Besides,” Doug continued. “You’re both… women,” Chell’s breath caught in her throat at the unexpected comment. “You can help her more than I could in any case.” He quickly added. 

“I-I’m not… I mean, I don’t have-” Chell stammered, and quickly fell silent as heat rose in her face. Doug cocked his head in curiosity. She hadn’t needed to have this kind of discussion in a very, very long time. 

“I mean, I thought you had seen my file?” Chell offered. 

“Yeah, of course, but what does that- Hold on.” Doug reached into his bag, and Chell felt the familiar presence of butterflies in her stomach. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t like Doug was in any position to be opinionated about her identity, but this was never an easy conversation to have. He retrieved a manila folder, and Chell could see her name on the tab. He started thumbing through it, and his eyes widened in realization.

“Oh.” He said, simply. Chell bit her lip and trained her eyes on the ground.

“Yeah.” She replied. The two were silent as Doug tried to think of something to say to ease the palpable tension in the air. 

“Look, that doesn’t matter right now. Either way, you can relate to her in at least some capacity, and I can’t relate in any capacity, except how I’d love to make her pay for what she did. So no matter what, it’s best that you talk to her, and I don’t.” Chell met Doug's eyes, and after a moment's hesitation, she nodded.

“Well, I guess we’d better go… check on her.” Chell said, a small shudder running through her body. Doug pulled a keycard out of his lab coat pocket, punched a number into the door, swiped his card, and swung it open, ushering Chell in before him.

True to her word, GLaDOS had clearly finished and redressed herself, and had turned to look in their direction as they entered the room. Chell stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, taking a moment to take a deep breath. She squared her shoulders, winced when the knot in her neck flared up, and opened her eyes. Steeling herself, she padded her way to where GLaDOS was sitting silently, took a seat next to her, and hesitated a moment before speaking.

“So….” She started, unsure of what to say. “I guess we should talk.”

“I’ll admit, I don’t exactly have the best idea of what you humans would deem ‘socially acceptable behavior,’ alright? Is that what you wanted to hear?” GLaDOS was clearly on the defensive.

“Relax. I’m not here to scold you. I get that all this is new to you.” Chell soothed. “I want to help you understand what it is that you were doing, but I want to understand why you were doing it in the first place.”

“Oh.” The other woman simply responded. Chell cocked her head, waiting for a response. GLaDOS’ face flushed, and her hands fidgeted. 

“There’s got to be something wrong with me. I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s ridiculous. I mean, you, of all humans-” Chell narrowed her eyes.

“Sorry. Look, I don’t understand this. When I think about you in particular, and what we’ve been through, this body starts to feel warm all over. At first I thought I might have contracted one of your human diseases, because my heart rate increased as well. But I never felt BAD, not really. And I figured out that if I touched myself down here-” She pointed at her crotch for emphasis. “Those feelings went away. I had just figured it was something all humans did.”

“Chell-” Chell’s face flushed. GLaDOS said her name in such a tender tone, just then. “What is going ON with me? Your reaction before made it seem like this isn’t normal. As much as it pains me to say it, I need your help.” GLaDOS’ tone seemed urgent, like she thought she had some horrible affliction. It reminded her of when GLaDOS was still in potato form, desperate for Chell’s help to defeat Wheatley, desperate to figure who she was.

It was during those times when Chell thought of GLaDOS almost as a friend. She watched the AI change; become, well, nicer. Her stinging barbs turning more into a lovable sarcasm. Chell had been the sole additional witness to where GLaDOS had come from, learned about Caroline and Cave Johnson along with her, and had felt the deepest sympathy for her condition. She hadn’t be sure if she was ready to forgive the AI. Until now. Now, she was sure, that something inside of GLaDOS was worth forgiveness, as that same person sat in front of her, worry on her face, professing her feelings to her like Chell was the only person in the world that GLaDOS could talk to on the level. 

Oh, how things had changed.

Chell shifted in her seat, and winced when she noticed for the first time a bulge in her underwear hardening. GLaDOS had pleasured herself to thoughts of her. That fact was undeniable now, and it was up to Chell to decide where to go from here. Once again, Chell held the fate of GLaDOS in her hands. She eyed the other woman, and decided that this face, in all its sharp edges and angularity, was more a representation of the true GLaDOS than the central chassis had ever been. 

Chell reached down to gently take GLaDOS’ hand. This was wrong. This was right. She wasn’t sure. But she had to do something.

“GLaDOS, you’re in love with me.” She said.


	5. Norepinephrine and Dopamine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell tries to find a solution to the ticking emotional timebomb inside GLaDOS. Later, In a shocking, completely unexpected turn of events, GLaDOS finds new things to hate about being human. Finally, Doug goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Month 2! 
> 
> Things are really going to kick off this month. Trust me on that. 
> 
> In any case, more awkward fluff this week. 
> 
> As always, please leave comments and Kudos if you liked what you saw! 
> 
> Big love <3

GLaDOS stared at her, mouth agape. Just like she had been doing for the past minute.

“I had my doubts, but I think this confirms it. You are actually insane.” GLaDOS said, finally. 

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the right choice of words. But you’re clearly attracted to me. You were masturbating to the thought of me!” Chell fired back.

“Oh, that’s what masturbating is? Hmm, I guess that explains...wow, a lot of things, actually.” GLaDOS drifted, her head cocked up and to the left. “Anyways, that’s not the point. I may be in a human body, but that doesn’t make me a human.”

“You asked for my help, and I gave it to you. If you don’t want it, then I won’t help.” Chell started to stand up, but GLaDOS grabbed her arm and held her in place.

“Wait! Look, let’s say, hypothetically for the sake of the experiment, that you’re right. What does that mean? I wouldn’t even know what to look for, I don’t know what your human ideas of… attraction are. I’m above that kind of thing. No offense.” GLaDOS’ eyes meandered anywhere but where Chell was caught in a crouch. Chell breathed a long, deep sigh, and sat back down.

She furrowed her brow in thought. How do you explain that? She thought to herself, and turned to look GLaDOS in the eye.

“Well, when you’re… attracted to someone, it’s almost as if, well. Sometimes they’re the only thing that you can think about, the only thing that matters. You have this respect and admiration for them. They’re your best friend, they’re….” She trailed off, and Chell fought the rising heat in her cheeks. 

“Does,” Chell cleared her throat. “Does any of this sound familiar?”

“Not at all. All I can feel is how much I hate you.” Chell didn’t even blink. She stared GLaDOS right in the eyes, and GLaDOS felt a different kind of warmth rise. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” The AI diverted her gaze. “I lie when I’m nervous.”

“I know.” Chell stated, matter of factly. When she said that, GLaDOS felt all of the things Chell had described before all at once. Her breathing hitched, her heart sped up. She almost felt in a delirium. It was overwhelming, and she was left unable to say much of anything for a few moments.

“Chell,” She started. “I want to try something. I don’t know exactly what it does, except that it helps with this sort of thing. I saw some of the scientists do this a long time ago. Do you trust me?” She asked, her voice quiet, her lip quivering, a sense of vulnerability surrounding her. It was so out of character for the GLaDOS that Chell had known less than a week ago. Chell hesitated, wondering what she had in mind, though in her heart, she knew exactly what was about to happen. She nodded in approval, and watched her as GLaDOS took a deep breath to steady herself, darted her tongue briefly across her lips, and leaned in towards the other woman. Chell, who still gently held GLaDOS’ hand in her own, could feel it shaking. 

Chell recalled all of the really bad romance novels she had read in her youth. They all described a first kiss as a moment that lasted forever. Time would slow down as the two lovers locked their lips together until they couldn’t breathe.

This was not that kiss. GLaDOS poked her lips out, and contacted Chell’s for but a moment, and withdrew. Chell didn’t even have time to close her eyes before it was over, like time had spun faster in order to be over with it as soon as universally possible. GLaDOS sat up straight, examining Chell’s reaction, and gauging her own.

GLaDOS breathed.

So did Chell.

“I felt-” GLaDOS didn’t have time to finish before Chell launched forward, throwing her arms around GLaDOS’ head, and pressed her lips to the shockingly-human-AI again. GLaDOS tensed, expecting Chell to hurt her, and it took her a moment before relaxing into Chell’s arms, and widening her lips to accept the other woman’s. Chell’s eyes were closed, getting her primary sensory input from touch only. GLaDOS, not being sure of any kind of kissing etiquette, had her eyes wide open. 

Another inaccuracy of bad romance novels, Chell discovered just then, was that the characters are always described as having all their thoughts wiped upon touching lips. Chell’s was doing just the opposite. She couldn’t stop thinking. She was cataloging all manner of things, like how GLaDOS felt, tasted, smelled. She was also running an inner dialogue about how right or wrong this was, whilst simultaneously maneuvering her lips around GLaDOS’, and she was feeling overwhelmed. GLaDOS had significantly less thought going on about the situation, and was merely trying to hold onto the ride, focusing all her efforts on the activity.

After at least 30 seconds, Chell had to pull away, gasping despite not having lacked access to air. Any choice to not breathe had been a conscious one on Chell’s part. Not so much for GLaDOS, who hadn’t quite mastered multi-tasking yet. GLaDOS was actually out of breath, taking in small gulps of air. They stared at each other as they steadied themselves, and Chell was the first one to speak.

“I changed my mind. I agree with you, I must be insane.” Chell said, her voice dripping with what sounded and felt like disgust with herself.

“Then I am too. But I suspect if I asked you a week ago, you’d definitely agree that I was insane, if you had said anything at all.” GLaDOS’ voice fluctuated, still a little out of breath. Chell looked her in the eyes, trying to read her. 

“So, um,” GLaDOS stammered. “I do feel, what you said. More or less. Within P is less than zero-point-zero-five parameters, anyways. So there’s certainly a correlative link-” Before she could finish what was likely to be a long tangent, Chell stood up and paced towards the opposite wall, her hand pushing her hair back, feeling incredibly exasperated. GLaDOS is in love me. Or at least infatuated with me. But then I kissed HER. Do I love her back? And why doesn’t it bother me that I can feel this way for...well, a machine? Is it even fair to call her a machine anymore? Or am I just that desperate for human contact? Were the thoughts spinning through Chell’s brain. GLaDOS, however, wasn’t considering thoughts that deep. She was deciding that despite what she had said approximately a week ago, Chell really did look good in the Aperture Test Subject Jumpsuit. Especially from behind.

“Alright. We should get moving. We’re wasting time.” Chell had started anxiously fidgeting in impatience, and GLaDOS nodded, starting to pack relevant supplies into her jumpsuit pockets. Chell came up behind Doug, who was sitting at his computer, and leaned in the check the screen. He jumped at her sudden presence, but quickly relaxed once her saw it was her.

“Sorry,“ She said. “Any progress?”

“Not really,” He responded. “The lockdown is restricting a lot of what I can access. Luckily, though, I have found us an employee quarter’s section near some storage servers that might help us get more information, since I can access them directly. The good news is that they’re close, it won’t take us long to get there.”

“And the bad news?” Chell finished for him.

“The bad news is the doors to the server room are locked, and I’m not one hundred percent sure how long it’ll take or what it will take to get them open. The better news is that the employee quarters are directly adjutant to long-term food storage, meaning lots of nonperishable food that was stored in the event of such a lockdown. I knew of it, but it required an employee card to access, like most important facilities, and under GLaDOS she’d have locked me in there. I wouldn’t starve, of course, but she’d just pump in neurotoxin.” Doug had turned to look at her.

“I get it, Doug. But my experience with her has been different. She’s changed.” Chell said. “She’s more than just a machine. She’s a person. You should know that. And people change, Doug.”

“Every time I hear her talk, I see my co-workers collapsing from neurotoxin exposure. I hear her talking over the PA, goading at me. I hear their screams, Chell.” Doug’s voice was quiet, wavering.

“You trusted me to take her down before. Now trust me to take care of her now. I need you to do that for me. I promise you, we’ll get out of here.” Chell proclaimed. Doug watched her steely, resolute eyes, and saw that she meant what she said. He nodded, and swung his chair around, standing up with a wince as he put weight on his bad leg. Chell called out to GLaDOS to come with them, and they left the break room. Chell threw her right arm around Doug’s shoulder, taking up supporting his left side and they started walking.

The whole time, Chell was incredibly distracted. All she was thinking about how GLaDOS and how ridiculous of a situation this was. GLaDOS, meanwhile, was thinking about how ridiculous it was that she was feeling jealous about Chell having her arm around Doug and not her. Of course it was ridiculous, and yet, she was feeling intense jealousy either way. It made no sense. And it put her in a really, really bad mood. She didn’t want to feel jealous, and she was mostly just pissed off that she felt that way at all. She was huffing and sighing the whole way to the employee blocks, mumbling to herself in low, inaudible words. Chell didn’t notice that anything had been wrong with GLaDOS until they had made it to the employee’s quarters and started settling in, as it was likely that this was going to be their home for a while, at least until Doug could figure out a way into the server room and find out how to unlock the exterior doors. Chell first noticed there was a problem when she took a look for GLaDOS and found her sitting on the bed in the room they set up for her, sulking with a scowl on her face. 

“What’s up?” Chell asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just thinking about how hard it must be for Rattmann. You know, with his leg and all.” There it was, Chell felt it, that undercurrent of sarcasm and passive-aggression that was GLaDOS-speak for ‘something is wrong, I’m mad, and I’m going to refuse to directly address the problem.’ Chell sighed, sat down next to her, and took GLaDOS’ hand, hoping it would help her feel better, playing on GLaDOS’ feelings. Chell was surprised when GLaDOS didn’t close her hand around her own, and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.

“What’s really the problem.” It was barely spoken as a question, more as a verbal machete cutting right to the point that Chell was infamous for in personality. GLaDOS, of course, sighed harshly, turned her head away, and paused for almost a minute before finally speaking.

“It’s nothing-” GLaDOS started.

Chell didn’t even say anything, just sent GLaDOS a look that could melt through carbon steel, and the smaller woman fell silent. She didn’t need any problems in the group, and she was not willing to deal with GLaDOS’ trademark recursive lies. The blonde sighed again, flicking her head to clear a stray lock of hair from her face.

“Fine. I feel jealous. The way you were holding Rattmann up. It’s ridiculous and I’m above that put I feel it anyways and I hate it.” GLaDOS fired off her words like out of a submachine gun, and Chell blinked, taking just a moment to take it all in before finally responding.

“I see. You know that it's because you’re possessive, right? You always have been. You’re not used to the hormones of this body yet and it's causing you distress.” Chell said, respecting the direct nature of their conversation by continuing to say exactly the truth. GLaDOS soaked that in, pondering it in her mind. Before GLaDOS could say anything, Chell asked the question that had been on her mind all day.

“What is it about me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” GLaDOS responded, and Chell looked her in the eye with a telltale stone-faced expression, and GLaDOS rolled her eyes. Of course, she knew she owed Chell an answer. She was the only person she felt she could be on the level with, after what they had been through together taking down Wheatley.

“It’s a lot of things. When I woke up like this, I was confused. I didn’t know how to make this,” GLaDOS gestured to her body. “Do what I wanted. I started thinking about you, using you as an example for how to function in this body. Then I realized that you were the one person who I looked to for an example of what to be, how to act. I started going back over what I knew about you and I realized that you were the only one I felt that I could really trust. And when I got into this human body, when I started to think about the way you looked, which was of course in context at that point, I started getting these feelings,” she said, pausing only to take a breath before continuing.

“But if you’re asking for the root cause; It’s that aside from Rattmann, you were the only one who was my equal; for someone like me, that’s a rarity.” She finished. Chell mulled that over. She made a thoughtful hum.

“Well, I need to go set up my own room. I’ll be back later.” Chell stood up and waved her goodbye. She opened the cracked door to the room she had chosen for herself earlier, which had a nameplate on the door that read “Mari Kendor, Chief Engineer”. She flipped on the light, and settled onto the bed, sighing in relief. Just firm enough and just soft enough to be perfectly comfortable, which bemused her, since she had always figured that Aperture put little stock into comfort of anyone, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The bedroom had decent amenities, a desk with a computer and lots of work space, a drawer with clothes that may or may not fit her, and a nightstand with an industrial-looking lamp sitting on it.

Chell had lied, of course. She had already completely set up her room with what minimal things she had. She was merely looking for an excuse to leave. The entire situation with GLaDOS was confusing and she wasn’t entirely ready to directly approach it unless forced to. She shouldn’t have even asked GLaDOS what she had, except by an impulse decision. Which confused Chell even more; Avoiding issues was rarely what she did. 

It bothered her. Everything about this bothered her. Yes, GLaDOS had changed into a nicer person. But now, all of a sudden, GLaDOS was attracted to her. Or, at the absolute least, was now proclaiming such things. And no, not just physically, but emotionally as well, with reasoning that had come from before GLaDOS had even been downloaded into her new body. It was entirely plausible that GLaDOS had felt this way even since they had started working together. Maybe even before that.

The thing that bothered her the most was that Chell felt almost the same way back. After all, it had been Chell that had forced her lips onto GLaDOS’. This was the one thing Chell was so desperately trying not to confront, because frankly it changed a large portion of her identity. She had been fighting against GLaDOS for so long, this wasn’t right.

Chell could feel her leg bobbing anxiously, so she stood up and began pacing the room instead. She couldn’t avoid this forever. Or even all that long at all. Eventually she was going to get frustrated at herself and confront GLaDOS about it. She knew herself at least that well. In the meantime, Chell knew that she needed to decide her stance on this. 

~-~-~

GLaDOS was restless. So she had started wandering the halls of the complex, looking for interesting things to do or see. She had never really seen or cataloged this part of the facility, her access being restricted. She poked her head into room after room, searching for anything interesting. She had, in the hour or so of exploring, found a side bag, a reasonably comfortable pair of shoes; a pair of black flats, and many assorted interesting items, that she had filled her new bag with. She also packed some clothes that she thought might fit her body, as well. This was turning out to be a very productive activity. 

She shut the door of the room she had just been in, a female scientist named Gina Hartman. She had found something quite interesting, some kind of tapered white dowel in a box in one of her drawers. I’ll have to ask Chell if she knows what this is. GLaDOS thought, as she turned it over in her hand. She shrugged, tucked it into her bag, and turned to her right and rounded a corner. 

The hallway was covered in colors. Paintings, specifically. GLaDOS slowed her pace, looking at each as she walked by. Lots of scribbles and repeated phrases, almost nonsensical most of the time. She stopped at one painting in particular. It was of her. Not this body; Her old one, her chassis. Her optic projected a bright amber beam which cut a path through a dark corridor that was piled with bodies, and partially illuminated a frightened stick figure, peeking around a corner. GLaDOS looked a little further down, and saw a continuation of this story. The stick figure was triumphantly holding up a manila folder, that had a faint white aura surrounding it. The next frame showed Chell, climbing out of a relaxation pod, the stick figure barely visible peering at her from an observation window. One of GLaDOS’ cameras was in the corner, and was painted with a particular scratchiness as it watched over the girl. 

The mural ended there, but GLaDOS knew the rest of the story. 

She turned and kept moving. 

~-~-~

Doug hadn’t been here in a long time. 

He stood in front of a door. A very particular door. This one, unlike any other in the employee complex, read Doug Rattmann on it. His door. His room. His hand hesitated at the handle. Was he ready for this? He didn’t remember what was inside. Anything could be here. Unpleasant memories from the first few months of terror, the start of his declining mental health as he ran out of meds. Anything could be here, and he didn’t know if he was ready. Given what he had passed in the halls on his way here, there could be pain in this room unlike anything he could remember.

“Whatever is in there, we’ll handle together. Like we’ve always done.” Cube spoke up, comforting him from the sling where she sat on his back. “You can do this.” Doug blinked, then nodded, setting his shoulders, and throwing his hand down on the handle, swinging the door wide open. 

There was almost nothing in the room. One wall had a few paintings on it but nothing particularly relevant to his survival from GLaDOS’ takeover. It was just a room. A bed, some drawers, a desk. It was just a normal room. 

“Wha-” Doug began, incredulously, 

“I think you might have intentionally not left reminders here,” Cube pondered. “In case you needed to come back.”

“In case I needed a place of stability.” Doug finished for her. Doug stood in the doorway, oblivious to the ache in his leg, taking everything in. There was nothing here.

All of a sudden, he started laughing. It started as a quiet chuckle, but quickly rose in volume and became a rancorous bellowing of laughter. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he stumbled his way inside, collapsed on the bed, and just...laughed. Years of pain and torment, mental and physical, were let out as he stepped into this relic of a room. 

He knew then, in his heart, for the first time in years, that he was safe. As safe as one could be in Aperture, but safe nonetheless. His laughs slowed down, losing volume, until he fell silent. 

“I’ve never seen you like that. Are you ok?” Cube asked.

“More than ok,” Doug said, simply. He stood up from his perch on his familiar bed. “Let’s not waste time. We’ve got things to do.” He set his bag down next to him, and started pulling out his painting supplies.

~-~-~

GLaDOS was watching him paint. He knew it wasn’t Chell, because her Long Fall Boots made a distinctive metallic clicking noise. These footsteps that had walked to his door and stopped were soft. Doug didn’t feel threatened. He just kept painting. He needed to finish these murals before these positive emotions, and the resulting clear-headedness he hadn’t felt in so long had left him. These were more reminders to himself. He needed to strengthen this place as somewhere he could think clearly. So he kept painting, and ignored the woman in his doorway, watching him. At least until she spoke up.

“I see you’re graffiti-ing another one of my walls.” She said, finally.

“Not your walls anymore.” He said, without missing a beat.

“Heh. Touchè, Rattmann.” She said with a faint smirk. Neither said anything for a few minutes, GLaDOS continuing to observe him. She saw Chell, again, face to face with the same stick figure she had seen in all of his other murals. She saw her own limp chassis, optic dark. Then she saw her new body, a downcast expression on her own face, Chell at her side. This iteration of her was painted cleanly, with bright colors. But the stick figure was always the same. Drawn with harsh lines, no defining characteristics, always a background character to the larger story at hand.

“I’ve seen your other murals.” She said.

“Not easy to miss.” He responded, simply. She hummed in agreement. Another loaded pause followed, GLaDOS shifting uncomfortably behind him.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want.” He said.

“What makes you think I want anything?” She shot back, voice like a dagger.

“You always want something. I of all people should know that.” Doug turned his head to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. “So tell me what you want, and if you don’t want anything, I’d like to ask that you leave.” She stood still for a moment, unable to find the words that she wanted.

“Why paint me like that? After all I’ve put you through?” She managed to get out. Doug hadn’t anticipated that. 

“Paint you like what?” He inquired.

“In every other painting with me, I’m painted with rough lines and muted colors. Almost like you just didn’t have the energy to take your time with it. In that one,” She pointed to the mural he stood in front of. “You’ve painted me with care. The lines are clean, colored well. So what’s changed?”

“Maybe I’m just in a trying mood.” Doug deflected. GLaDOS laughed harshly at that.

“Then why haven’t you painted yourself with any effort? That poorly drawn stick figure is you, right? Why do you paint her, and now me, the way you do, but then paint yourself that way?” Doug closed his eyes, like he knew the answer, but just couldn’t say it.

“Because she deserves it and I don’t.” He breathed. “As for you? I don’t know.”

“You paint well, you know.” Doug furrowed his brow and turned to face her.

“What?” He said, incredulously.

“I said you paint well. Did you not hear me right?”

“No, I did,” He drawled out, slowly. “But it came from you, so it didn’t quite seem right. Why would you care if I paint well?”

“I can appreciate art, you know. No matter what you may think of me.” GLaDOS said. Doug sat silent at that for a few moments, then turned back to his mural.

“Thanks.” He said simply, and it was clear to GLaDOS that the conversation was over.


	6. Freud, and his fraudulent theories on Psychosexual psychology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weight of Chell's time in Aperture presses on her. A facility, thought dead, rumbles back to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, the plot truly begins....
> 
> I'd like to take some time to extend my genuine gratitude and appreciation for everyone who has read this fic so far, and that goes double and triple for those who have left kudos and comments respectively. It is incredibly rewarding to me to be able to interact with the comments you all leave. 
> 
> So, thanks. You make this all worth it.
> 
> Things get pretty nutty starting next chapter, so i hope you're all prepared ;)
> 
> Big love! <3 If you liked it, please leave Kudos and Comments!

She was naked, and pressed up against a wall. Their lips were glued to one another, their hands wandering across each others bodies. Chell felt GLaDOS’ palm grip her breast and cup it, and she pulled away slightly from GLaDOS’ mouth, gasping slightly, her head leaning back against the wall. GLaDOS ducked her head and nipped at the flesh on her chest, eliciting a gasp of breath from her. She felt a hand slide it’s way down to her crotch. Fingers tangled through the hair there, and teased at her clit fleetingly. She looked down to see the kind of smirk that Chell always imagined that GLaDOS would have made had she been human all along. 

She held this same smirk as she lowered to a crouch and pressed her lips to the tip of Chell’s cock, then running her tongue along its length, pulling a quiet mewl from Chell’s throat. Chell’s hands found their way to GLaDOS’ head, tangling her fingers in her hair. GLaDOS took Chell into her mouth, and she gasped, jumping slightly as GLaDOS began sucking the head of her cock in her small mouth. One of GLaDOS’ hand grabbed at Chell’s ass, the other reaching down to massage her pussy. Chell moaned at the touch, and felt another pang of heat in her crotch as she watched GLaDOS start to masturbate. GLaDOS’ started bobbing her head back and forth, and Chell could feel the waves of pleasure rising inside of her already. It had been so long, she was already close to climax. 

She felt her whole body tense, and a ragged cry ripped from her throat as she came, hard, inside GLaDOS’ mouth. She was still gently shaking from the resulting waves of orgasm when GLaDOS pulled herself away, swallowed, licked her lips, and laughed. It was a very particular laugh.

She had heard that laugh before. It was quiet and deep, had a melodic tune and was distinctly digital. Suddenly, she wasn’t there. She didn’t see a blonde woman with Chell’s juices on her lips, and she wasn’t naked. She saw GLaDOS; the real GLaDOS, the chassis. It’s bright yellow optic was gazing at her from it’s perch in the center of the chamber. She felt the heat of an incinerator on her back, saw the Portal Gun in her hands, and all of a sudden, she was deathly afraid. 

Then the neurotoxin began pumping into the room. She saw the missile turret rise from the floor. She knew what she had to do, but she couldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t obey her.

The targeting laser of the missile turret settled onto her chest. No, this isn’t how this is supposed to happen! She started hyperventilating, her whole body locked up in terror. The laser beam turned red, and the mouth of the turret’s barrel exploded outward in flame as it launched a missile. The missile accelerated down the room, barreling towards her, and Chell let loose a blood-curdling scream as it impacted her.

 

She was sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat, panting heavily, and clutching at her chest where the missile had hit her. Except of course, that it hadn’t. She was not, in fact, in the Central Chamber, just as she had not been eaten out by GLaDOS. But one of them had been real. One dream was based in reality, the other was not. 

Chell’s hands grabbed at her head, and felt hysteria descending upon her. She wasn’t strong enough, this time. She had been killed again, and again, and again in her night terrors over the past week, and it was just too much. Every night, she died someway new. Sometimes it was a turret, sometimes she hit an Aerial Acceleration Plate, only to look down and see her bare feet, no Long Fall Boots. Sometimes she misspaced a jump and fell into toxic goo. It always hurt. Like now, she could feel a faint pain radiating from the center of her chest, even after she woke up. The only other constant was a voice. Sometimes it was Hers. Sometimes it was His. But no matter what, she heard a voice, and it always hurt.

Tears blinked at her eyes, and she started sobbing, slowly and quietly at first, then devolving into loud, ugly heaving. She whispered incoherent words to herself between sobs, that even as the one who spoke them she couldn’t decipher. She was tired. She was so exhausted, through to her very soul. Aperture couldn’t kill her, so it was going for the next best thing and killing her in her dreams.

10 minutes later, she began winding down, regaining some of her composure. Her cheeks were wet, nose dripping, and hands gently shaking, tangled in her hair. She sniffled a few times, wiped her eyes with a balled fist, and stepped off the bed towards her bathroom. Fetching a towel off the rack on the wall opposite the mirror, she wiped her face and hands clean, splashed some water on her face, then retreated to her bed to take a seat. 

“You’re not dead. You’re alive. You’re still alive.” Chell repeated these lines to herself in no particular order for several minutes. “You. Are. Alive.” She finished, and fell silent, reminding herself to take regular, deep breaths. She was used to this process; night terrors occurred more often than not, and she knew what she needed to do to calm herself down. She lay there, letting her breathing normalize and the dark thoughts fade away from her mind. 

As she got up to head back to the bathroom, intent on showering for the first time in a week, she could have sworn she heard faint footsteps outside her door. 

She began to shed her clothes, which only consisted of her tank top and underwear, which she noted with a weary disgust was streaked with cum. Next, she reached behind her head and undid the tie holding her hair up, humming in satisfaction as her strained scalp was given relief. She scolded herself for forgetting to release her hair before she went to sleep, now she was likely going to have to spend all of today with her hair down unless she wanted to spend the day having scalp pain.

She opened the fogged glass shower door, branded with the Aperture logo, and reached inside to turn the handle labeled ‘H’, yelping in alarm when the water that spewed onto her arm was boiling hot. She rapidly moved her hand to the ‘C’ handle and turned it slightly, sighing in relief when the water immediately cooled to a more manageable temperature. Aperture must have some seriously good water pumps, Chell reckoned. She stepped through the threshold and let her body be doused, sighing in relief as the blissfully warm water flowed over her. She rubbed at her neck, where she still had lingering pain from the night before. She stood in the flow, letting the faucet continue it’s rapid-fire assault on her body, and felt her taut muscles relax ever so slightly. It felt like an eternity ago since she had showered, when in reality it was merely a week. GLaDOS had actually kept her promise after Chamber 10, and allowed Chell to go to a break room, which even included a washroom. Chell was, naturally, suspicious, but it had turned out that her goodwill towards Chell was genuine. She had taken a short but much-needed shower, lest GLaDOS scold her for taking too long, eaten, and returned to the testing track. 

This shower would be much longer. Chell needed one, and in fact declared to herself that she deserved it. She took her time in scrubbing down her body, lathering her hair, watching the dark brown, grimy, and greasy water flow down the drain. It was cathartic. She was washing away the events of the last week, bit by bit, and it felt more than good. It felt right. 

As the general grime washed off her body, it exposed the innumerable scars that sliced their way across her skin. This short, almost ruler-drawn scar on her right bicep was from a shard of wood from her fall into old Aperture. Her knees had webbed scars across them; surgical scars from the knee implants, then trauma scars from their violent removal. The round one on her left thigh had been from a turret. She had a very recent looking, long, jagged scar on the lower right half of her torso. She could only assume it had been from the fight with Wheatley, when a piece of shrapnel from his explosive trap had nearly gutted her, had it been a few degrees different. She didn’t remember the specific instance of getting it, as she had been too preoccupied with defeating Wheatley to check over her physical well being, and she knew she didn’t have this particular scar until after she had woken up, alone, in the Central Chamber. 

It was in that moment, the Chell finally understood that she couldn’t get away from Aperture completely. It had left it’s tattoos across her skin, a reminder forever that she had been here. 

Her fingers traced over her skin, seeking out the pale scar flesh that stood out against her tanned skin, her mind not quite really aware of the outside world. There, on her left palm, when she had been knocked over and fell on a catwalk, cutting her hand on the textured steel. On her left forearm, a small burn during Wheatley’s downfall. On her chest, shrapnel from a rocket, when she first took down GLaDOS.

Chell’s sighed, and hastily finished scrubbing anything she had missed and turned off the shower. She pushed open the shower door, grabbed at the towel she had left on the rack, and ran it over her hair, rubbing vigorously. She dried herself as she stepped to the fogged mirror, and gave it a few swipes with her off hand, enough to reveal her body in a less blurred manner. Without the jumpsuit on, and with a clear view of everything, Chell remarked on how muscular she was. Not quite six-pack and ripped, but her arms and legs were thick with muscle, and her abdomen taut. Her estradiol hormones had done a lot to sap her upper body strength, and her work out routine had only done so much to keep up with it. 

Growing up, Chell had done what she would call an average amount of physical activities. She had grown up with a relatively masculine childhood, and took part in a number of physical activities, like Soccer, even paintball in her spare time, but she had always mostly focused on her academics, and once she got into university, and subsequently realized she was trans, she really only kept herself as fit as she had to be. Chell supposed then, she owed Aperture at least that much; not only had it provided the hormones that no other company in her field at the time would have, it had forced her into the physically capable body she now had, whether or not she had a choice. And she had to admit, it made her look good. Really good. She remembered the emotional distress that her dysphoria caused her in the first few years of her transition, and every day that she could look at herself in the mirror, or even through a portal, and see the woman she was always supposed to be, it was like a wave of relief all over again.

Plus, she looked really cute. She eyed herself with a small grin, shook out her hair, and wrapped her body in her towel. Sure that it was snug and not going to fall off, she padded into her new bedroom, and started to rummage through the dresser against the far wall. She started with the top left drawer and was greeted by a swath of panties, in a wide variety of colors. Chell hesitated; she wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about using a dead person’s underwear. Then she remembered that she had likely been wearing the same pair of Aperture-issued boxer briefs for what could very possibly be years, and bucked her concerns out the window. 

Besides, she had never owned any underwear nearly this cute, and she really wanted to take advantage of that She shook off the towel which flapped to the floor, picked out a pair of comfortable looking black panties, and held them up against her hips. They appeared to match in size somewhat, so Chell shrugged, and tucked her leg up to pull them on. She let them go with a soft snap against her skin. Of course, she was physically much larger than most women, so it was slightly too small, but not so much that it was particularly uncomfortable. 

In the upper left hand corner, though, something detailed caught her eye. A pair of silky, frilled purple panties. These were clearly not everyday wear, Chell reckoned.

She wondered if Mari Kendor was pretty. Maybe there’s a photo around here somewhere, she thought. She shrugged again, and closed that drawer, opening the drawer to it’s right, revealing a handful of bras. A few sport bras, a couple padded bras in various colors, and there was the companion purple lingerie bra to the panties in the other drawer. Curious, she reached over and angled it towards her, trying to find a label. Squinting, she found it; 34B cup size. The strap would be very small on her; her own bra size, as far as the sports bra as a part of her uniform said, was a 38B. But, if she could find some kind of extension for it, she could probably get it to fit if she wanted it to.

She considered that for a moment. At least as far back as Chell could remember, she had never actually owned any good lingerie, let alone a large amount of particularly cute women’s clothes at all, as she had never been particularly affluent, and good lingerie cost money that could have gone to food, or gas, or bills. Looting from dead engineers was free, though, so there was almost no disadvantage, save any moral ones, which Chell figured she had already waived when she stole the pair of panties in the first place. Besides, who would stop her?

Chell suppressed a chuckle, as she dropped the bra back into the drawer. Sometime soon, she said to herself, and after discovering the only black sports bra was not elastic and thus would not fit her, she picked out a matching black padded bra to her currently adorned underwear, one of the only ones to have substantially adjustable straps, reaching around her back with some small difficulty, and after several attempts, as well as a few frustrated grunts, she finally managed to get the clasp at just the right tightness. 

To Chell’s surprise, most of the pants in the dresser fit her decently well. Then again, they were in men’s sizes, which she briefly winced at before remembered that men’s pants had pockets that could actually hold things, women’s almost always did not. Had she not had the muscular bulk in her legs and hips, they might have been a tad loose, but nothing a belt couldn’t fix. The legs were a little short, coming at just above her ankles, but that didn’t bother her too much. Most shirts were tight around her biceps but were otherwise comfortable. In short, most everything here was close enough, and she’d take that over having to keep wearing her greasy, dirty jumpsuit. Most of all, she had the choice of clothes that didn’t have the Aperture logo branded starkly on it, which is what she cared most about. She chose a simple gray shirt, and a thin olive-drab jacket as well. Unfortunately, none of the shoes here were even remotely her size, so the Long Fall Boots would have to do until she found an alternative.

Chell stepped back into the bathroom, and gazed at herself in the mostly-unfogged mirror, and marveled at how normal she looked. She wasn’t dressed like a prisoner, and she didn’t look as if she had been struggling for survival for the past week and a half. This is what someone looked like when they went out to eat, or hang out with their friends. She smiled, made a pleasant hum, and stepped back into the bedroom. She had things to do today. 

~-~-~

Doug awoke to a deep, rhythmic thumping in the walls. It sounded far away but it was definitely there, something deep in the facility pounding away. 

“Cube? Do you hear that?” He whispered to the darkness. “Or is it just me?”

“Hmm..?” She sounded groggy, like she had just woken up. 

“That…. Thumping.” He said, sitting up and reaching to his right for the switch to his bedside lamp.

“Oh. Yeah, I do.” Doug breathed a sigh of relief, but his relief quickly turned into concern. The facility had been silent since he woke up days ago. Someone or something was doing something high-profile, manufacturing something or moving chambers around. GLaDOS was predictable and could be evaded, but whatever was doing this was an unknown figure. He couldn’t stay alive if he didn’t know what to do.

“Doug, breathe.” Cube gently reminded, and Doug sucked in a breath and let it go. He fought to quell his rising panic, while Cube coaxed him along in clearing his mind.

“We have a team now. We’ll figure this out together.” Cube stated as concrete fact, not leaving room for any uncertainty. Doug slowly nodded. Cube was right; things were different now, when GLaDOS was in charge, it was a certainty that she wanted him dead, but for all he knew the facility was just automatically reactivating the atmospheric scrubbers. This could be nothing. 

Still, it didn’t hurt to be cautious. He gingerly swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and tucked his feet into his shoes. He didn’t know what to make of the vibrating walls and floor, but he knew someone who would.

~-~-~  
Doug rounded the corner to the room where GLaDOS had been sleeping to find it already ajar, and heard the murmurings of conversation floating out into hallway. As he got closer, he could start hearing little snippets.

“-get that access, but I agree, we need to act now.” That was GLaDOS’ voice, though it was nasally and high-pitched, which said to him that she wasn’t comfortable with whatever was going on.

“There’s no telling how long it could take to get there. If it’s really as you say-” Chell stopped short as Doug pushed past the door and into the domicile, and by the looks on their faces, it told him all he needed to know.  
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” He asked, hoping that he had simply misinterpreted the whole situation. To his dismay but not his surprise, Chell nodded grimly.

“I can’t be 100% certain, not anymore anyways, but by the direction and distance, I believe that the facility is manufacturing turrets. When the facility is not being run, the automated systems have a series of priorities for objectives. First, is repair any damage to the facility and restore all critical systems. Second, secure the facility, to protect against intruders and espionage operatives. Third, account for all employees. Fourth, eliminate any intruders. Dr. Rattmann, you would normally be considered an employee and thus would be fine… except that I already scrubbed the employee list, yourself included, so that the turrets… well...” GLaDOS paused, not sure how to say how to say the next part.

“So that you could kill me.” He finished for her. She glared at him and sighed.

“Aperture never had protections for Test Subjects in these kinds of events, and we don’t even know whose body she’s in,” Chell diverted, jerking her thumb in GLaDOS’ direction. “They’ll shoot at all 3 of us. She also says that any locations connected to the main network are going to have turret security, so that server room that you were talking about is probably a no-go. However, she thinks she can direct us to an old regional network hub that can give us an idea of what we’re up against, or at least a map. She says that the system can’t place turrets inside the residential quarters, a restriction that I suspect is because of her to begin with.”

“So at the very least, we’re safe in here.” He said, rubbing his shoulder where the strap holding Cube to his back dug into him. Chell nodded again.

“So wait, how is my keycard still working?” Doug asked. 

“Ah, right. If you want to be perfectly technical, the employee list still exists. My chassis wasn’t allowed the permissions to restrict access to employees, but what I was allowed to do is revoke access to some systems to check the employee list at all. And that included turrets, which was all I really needed anyways. Given that the only one who could even get through doors was you, and it’s not like you were a particular threat to ME,” Doug and Chell shared a glance. “I didn’t consider it a big deal.” After a few dead quiet moments of pause, Chell spoke back up.

“Anyways….She also says that there’s a regional security office just outside the residential quarters that could give us an edge.” Chell said, a gleam in her eye.

“Right. It’s been a while, but as you know, Dr. Rattmann, Aperture used to have more than just turrets as a security measure. Turrets are good as area denial weapons, but they’re physically fragile and can’t really be used to clear rooms or secure labs. A full time security force used to be on payroll, outfitted more like a private military than a security team.” GLaDOS explained. Doug knotted his eyebrows; that was twice now that she had referred to him as ‘Dr. Rattmann’, not just Rat Man like she always did. GLaDOS always had a purpose for what she did, he wondered what this one was.

“Yeah, I remember them. Rifles, body armor. Would’ve liked to have some of that when I went up against your turrets,” Doug looked right at her. “But those security kiosks been locked down since, well, the GLaDOS project began, how do you expect to get inside?”

“That network hub might get us a way inside. They were the primary method of running areas of the facility before the chassis was linked to everything, so it might be able to grant us access if we do a little digging.” GLaDOS remarked, unfazed by Doug’s dig at her. 

“Our ultimate goal is to find a way to restore me back to my old body. Again. If we can do that, I can unlock the exits and let you both go. But the system is going to actively restrict our progress, and network hubs that are beyond the system’s reach only go so far. Dr. Rattmann,” Doug frowned at that. “You know how to get around the facility unnoticed better than anyone. Chell is used to dodging turrets, and though I’m loathe to admit it, she’s pretty good at solving difficult puzzles. I know how the system works. Between the 3 of us, I think we have as good a team as any to get me back in that chassis.”

“How can we trust that once you’re back in the chassis that you won’t just kill both of us or lock us in test chambers again?” Doug asked, his eyes narrowed. GLaDOS simply shrugged.

“My answer remains the same. That’d be up to you, but technically you can’t. If you choose not to help me, then you’re simply going to starve to death in these rooms anyways or get shot trying to leave. Besides, I think I’ve had enough of people messing up my facility. The longer I keep you two here, the drastically higher the chances are that one of you will break something. It’s in my best interest to let you go.” Doug wasn’t convinced, but he nodded anyways, admitting to himself that at least it made sense.

“Don’t trust her. You know better than that.” Cube piped up behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and gave Cube a knowing look, that said ‘I know.’ Chell had sat on GLaDOS’ bed, one leg perched up to her chest, the other hanging off the side.

“We’ll use the residential section as a sort of base of operations. We’ll make raids from here for food, important labs and hubs, and so on. To do that, though, we need the equipment in the security kiosk. There’s bound to be weapons and armor in there. And doing that means we need to get to that network hub,” Chell said. “How’s the leg?” 

“Still hurts. It’ll be at least a week until it’s functionally healed.” She grimaced, but GLaDOS spoke up before she could.

“That’s fine. That kiosk should have radio equipment as well, once we get those, he could direct us through the facility while keeping him off his feet, which should help him heal faster.” Chell nodded slowly, considering this. 

“...Yeah, that could work. I could-” Chell started, but Doug interrupted her.

“No way. I’ve hid and let you do the heavy lifting long enough. It’s not fair to you that you have go out there and be brave again while I lounge in safety.” His voice was hard and certain, as was the stone cold expression on his face.

“Doug, you’re hurt. It’s fine if you-”

“And you’re not? You’re not tired, in pain, nursing healing scars and muscles? Or how about your trip to the moon? Did you know that exposure to vacuum can considerably damage your lung walls and overexertion could collapse them? You’re hardly in any shape to go out risking your life – again – while I sit in my chair and act as a glorified GPS.” He was seething now with righteousness, and stood there staring her down for several moments, and it wasn’t until his leg was physically wobbling underneath him that he grimaced and took a seat on GLaDOS’ bed.

To her credit, Chell used the most gentle voice she could to say what she did.

“I’m sorry Doug, but you’d slow us down. We have a better chance of us all staying alive if you stay behind. I understand what you’re trying to do, but until you get better, you’d be a liability. And I will not let myself be responsible if you get hurt again.” She sighed, and shook her head.

“Look, let’s just focus today on getting our plans in order. We’ll make a run at the network hub tomorrow.”


	7. Segfault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the revived husk of Aperture, Chell, Doug, and GLaDOS aren't alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter notes at the end this time.

None of them slept well, each for their own reasons. They greeted each other with dark circles under their eyes, and started pouring over what material could be dug up of the area. Surprisingly, yet also completely unsurprisingly, it was nearly impossible to actually find a map of Aperture, let alone just the residential section. GLaDOS was doing her best to recall what was where, but as she was sure to remind them constantly, her current weak human brain was nothing compared to her storage racks. 

At present GLaDOS was probing into the computer in Chell’s room, squinting at the screen, while she stood just over the AI’s shoulder with her arms crossed, a frown plastered on her face. Doug was sitting on the bed, massaging his leg.

“You know, I don’t need you breathing on me. I think I of all people know how to use a computer.” GLaDOS remarked, not diverting her eyes from the screen. Chell rolled her eyes and gave a tiny huff, but took a step back. She couldn’t see it, but she swore that GLaDOS had smirked just then, but it disappeared before she could remark on it. GLaDOS gave a dramatic last click on the mouse with finality, and wheeled the chair away so the two of them could see what she had found.

“Well, this is the best I can do. It’s not a MAP per se, but I was able to find an AI pathfinding file in that area. They were used to guide the more primitive robotic workers before we just started making them sentient. It gives a rough outline of main corridors and such. I hope this is up to your standards, because I’m not going to waste any more of my time with this ancient hardware. It’s like trying to make a large hadron collider function by beating it with a rock. Which this CRT isn’t far off from.” Chell ignored most of her last sentence.

“Cool. Let’s print it off and get going.” She reached for the coat rack for her jacket, shrugged it on, and fastened on her long-fall boots. 

“So dare I ask, but what exactly am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Doug asked. Both Chell and GLaDOS shrugged. 

“Search for food, information, general supplies. I’m not your boss, you know. I’m certain you can find SOMETHING to keep yourself busy.” GLaDOS offered. Doug sighed deeply, and Chell stood back up, now 4 inches taller with the boots on. 

“We shouldn’t be gone long. And if we are…” Chell turned very serious. “Well, you’ll just have to figure it out. Don’t come looking for us. Just do whatever you can to get out.” She put emphasis on the last two words. ‘Get out. Run. Hide. Survive.’ She thought. He stared at her for a few moments, then nodded, his eyes dropping to the floor. She knew that he wouldn’t. If she didn’t come back, he would try to be the hero again, and get hurt or even killed. He knew it, too. She took at look at the other woman, and nodded in the direction of the door. 

“Good luck.” Doug said as they turned to leave, and then they were gone, and he was left alone with Cube.

“Be safe.” He whispered.

 

GLaDOS glanced down at the sheet of paper in her hand and squinted. The lines had begun to blur together several turns ago, at least to her anyways. Once again, she desperately wished she were back in her old body, at least just so that her optic wouldn’t blend fine details together. That, more than anyone at the moment, was annoying her. With a frustrated huff, she stopped and handed the sheet to Chell, who was watching behind them. 

“These faulty optics are awful. I don’t know how you make do.” Chell smirked and let the map drop into her hand. She knotted her brow for a moment, giving the sheet a thorough examination before eagerly pointing out their current location on the map.

“There. I remember these 2 turns down here. We’re not far now, a right, then a left, and a long hallway and we’ve made it.” GLaDOS narrowed her eyes in suspicion. 

“It’s not my fault that you’re used to compensating for your inferior hardware and I’m not.” Chell declined to mention that not that long ago, GLaDOS had been inside a potato. ‘Doesn’t get much more inferior than that.’ She thought. 

“You may just need glasses.” Chell suggested as they rounded a corner. Her heart stopped. She saw a lumbering shadow disappear into an open door down the hall.

“So what you’re telling me is-” She was cut off as Chell clamped her hand over the woman’s mouth, and pushed her behind the corner, slamming their backs against the wall. GLaDOS yelped into the brunette’s palm, which only caused her to tighten the grip on GLaDOS’ face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Chell had gone pale, and was peeking one eye around the corner. Eventually, sure that the hallway was empty, she loosened her vice-like grip on GLaDOS’ mouth and let a shaky breath escape her mouth.

“Do you mind telling me WHY you threw me against the wall with your… your lumberjack hands?” GLaDOS struggled with her words for a moment as she felt a twinge of familiar heat rising inside of her.

“I- I saw someone. Or something.” She whispered.

“What? That’s ridiculous, nobody but us and Rattmann is alive, and he never left residential. What exactly did you see?” 

“I don’t know. All I saw was a shadow, but it- it looked like a person. It was walking.” Chell peeked back around the corner, just to make sure whatever it was wasn’t watching them. GLaDOS rubbed at the back of her head, where it had bumped against the wall. Chell’s face quickly took one of concern.

“Oh! Sorry. Did you hit your head?” Taken slightly aback at the sudden apology, GLaDOS’ face flushed and she wasn’t sure what to say for a moment, but she regained her senses quickly.

“Yes. As is typical; I do nothing wrong, I get hurt by you. I’d expect nothing less.” Chell’s expression went from concerned to blank so fast that it seemed as if that’s the way it had looked all along, and GLaDOS failed to suppress a chuckle. The taller woman simply rolled her eyes.

“Look, we need to be more careful. Check every corner before you turn it from now on, ok?” Chell said, and GLaDOS simply nodded in response.

 

Twenty minutes later, they approached the doors to Network Hub 3-C, which had it’s windows blinded and an Out of Service sign, dated February of 1996, was slapped onto the exterior door. Predictably, the door was locked, but a CRT through an exterior window that Chell grabbed from a nearby office solved that issue nicely. GLaDOS grumbled the whole time about the wanton destruction, but shut up while Chell helped her through the window by the hand, and brushed away the loose glass so that she didn’t get cut. 

The inside was pitch black, and Chell slowly navigated her way to the light switch next to the door, trying not to bump into anything. With a flick, the expansiveness of the hub was illuminated clearly. Rows upon rows of computers all circled around one huge server tower which a vaulted ceiling tapered into at the center of the room, and various collections of terminals were labeled by their area of responsibility in the facility. 

“Alright, we’re looking for Level 3 Security.” GLaDOS announced from across the room, and they both commenced their search. Chell took the right half of the room, while GLaDOS took the left half. After passing by Level 2 Maintenance, Level 3 Manufacturing, and Level 3 Logistics, Chell passed by a group of 10 stations collectively labeled as Level 3 Robotics Labs, which wouldn’t have held her attention, until she noticed that of the hundreds of computers in this room, only one of the computers in this section was blinking with running lights. It was the only one still on. Her thoughts were interrupted by GLaDOS, who yelled that she had found what they were looking for. She took one last look, and stepped away to see what her companion had found.

 

As she crossed the room, she felt a wave of paranoia descend upon her. She felt like she was being watched. She looked towards the door and the shattered window anxiously, but saw nothing. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was there. GLaDOS followed her gaze, but didn't comment on it.

"This is the one." GLaDOS said, gesturing to the sign above the oversized cubicle of desktops. 

"Alright. What do I need to do?" Chell inquired.

"Nothing, really. Watch out for that imaginary person wandering around that you made up, I guess." GLaDOS barbed.

Chell glared at her like laser beams were focusing through her bright grey eyes, and GLaDOS threw her hands up defensively and put on a disarming face.

"I was joking. Calm down there, murder machine." Chell simply rolled her eyes and pulled out a chair which she settled into, sighing as she watched GLaDOS begin a boot up sequence on one of the desktop consoles. It made a loud whirring noise as if it we're literally shaking off its dust choked circuitry, and after a moment's hesitation an Aperture logo popped up on the screen, followed by a request for login information. GLaDOS' fingers awkwardly poked at the keyboard, clearly not used to using 'such primitive equipment' yet.

Username:  
carolinep1

Password:  
******

It took the computer almost 10 minutes to load for a new user, but once it did she had master level access to every system that console was connected to. She opened a management GUI and went to work, hunting and pecking her way through the system, unlocking access to a number of doors and sections.

"You know, one of us can actually type." Chell said, watching GLaDOS struggle with the keyboard with amusement. GLaDOS sneered at her, a blush rising in her cheeks.

"One of us has also spent the overwhelming majority of their life working inside this system." She fired back. Chell merely smirked and replied;

"It'd probably take as long for you to explain it to me while i work than for you to do it yourself." GLaDOS' face was reddening with embarrassment and Chell couldn't stop herself from giggling. GLaDOS demanded to know what was so funny, but that only made Chell laugh even harder. Chell couldn't remember the last time she had laughed this hard, or even at all. All of a sudden, it hit GLaDOS that she had never seen Chell laugh at all. She stopped and listened to her. It wasn't melodic and sultry like her own, but it was higher pitched, like the jingling of a wind chime. The only emotions she had ever seen Chell exhibit were anger, frustration, and exhaustion. Seeing this side of her was like seeing the world in a new light, appreciating Chell in a whole new way.

GLaDOS didn't think she could blush any harder than she currently was.

"Look, we're wasting time," GLaDOS deflected. "Can you just let me do this so we can get out of here?" She frantically nodded as she started to come down from her laughing fit, a hand covering a deep grin. It felt so good to laugh like that again, like she were bantering with her best friend. 

Best friend. She pondered on that choice of words. Was that what GLaDOS was to her now? The machine that had tried to kill her dozens of times, insulted and demeaned her as she risked her life in the AI's deadly test chambers was now sitting next to her, flesh and bone, and she made her laugh. And she had meant that laugh too, it had come as natural as anything else. 'Is that really what it has come too?' she wondered. 'Am I really just that messed up?' The grin was gone now.

"Alright, I’ve unlocked access to pretty much that entire section for Rattmann’s keycard. Let's get out of her before all this dust infects my lungs." GLaDOS announced. Chell was knocked from her thought and anxiously nodded, jumping to her feet and focusing her eyes on the window they came in through, looking for signs of trouble. Seeing none, she motioned for GLaDOS to fall in behind her. Once again, she helped GLaDOS through the window by hand, and whispered to her to watch her head on the window sill. It was a long walk back to the residential section with Chell leading the two of them, but GLaDOS chatted away to fill the silence and Chell let her, speaking only to answer questions directed at her. GLaDOS meanwhile, watched Chell all the while. Chell could feel her eyes from behind, too, but said nothing.

GLaDOS began lagging behind slightly, and Chell paused to give her a chance to catch up. When she caught up, she stopped and massaged at her calves, muttering about the pointlessness of the human form under her breath.

Then Chell noticed it.

Once more, she slapped her hand over GLaDOS’ mouth and listened. They had both stopped walking, but there were still footsteps resounding in the hallway. GLaDOS’ eyes widened, she heard it too this time. 

Someone, or something, was following them.

GLaDOS yelped as Chell grabbed her arm and pulled the other woman’s body over her shoulder, and took off on a sprint. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she felt fear. For most of her time in Aperture, she was sure of her enemy. Even from the beginning, GLaDOS talked over the PA system, she had some commentary to her torment in the test chambers. This time, though, all variables she could think of were accounted for already, and someone was still hunting her down. Until she knew what this was, they needed to run, and hide. It was almost a 100 meter sprint to the end of that hallway, and Chell’s legs pumped as hard as she could, the springs on her boots making a loud clicking noise with every footfall.

“The next left!” GLaDOS shrieked, and Chell skidded on the tiling when her boots lost grip as she tried changing direction mid-sprint. She almost tumbled as her boots regained traction, but maintained to grab the corner of the wall and brace herself, and she kept running down the next hallway. 30 meters down that hallway, a large blue-grey double door labeled Level 3 Dormitories greeted them, and Chell slid to a stop, slipping GLaDOS off her shoulder, and yanked on one of the door handles, pulling her and GLaDOS through it, then slamming it shut and bolting both doors.

Then she caught her breath, and slumped against the wall, panting heavily. Her legs and her lungs were burning, and her whole body felt warm. She hunched over with her hands on her knees, sweat dripping off of her forehead. She saw something dance in the top of her vision, and she glanced up to see GLaDOS offering her a bottle of water. She took it with a weary look of gratitude and a weak ‘thank you’, and drank greedily from it, downing a third of the bottle at once. 

GLaDOS stood there awkwardly as Chell recovered from the exertion. Slowly but surely, Chell’s breathing returned to normal.

“…. What was that?” She panted out, her weary grey eyes trained on the other women’s blue ones. GLaDOS was silent for a few moments, not quite in panic, but clearly disturbed and frightened. 

“I….Don’t know.” The AI’s words were soft, the total antithesis of GLaDOS’ persona. She was being truthful, she had no idea, and it showed on her face. Chell’s eyes dropped to the ground as her breathing finally normalized, and stood up straight.

“Then we need to make a run for that security office now. If someone or something is wandering around, we have to be able to defend ourselves.” Chell forced herself to sound confident. Right now, GLaDOS was vulnerable, not only physically, but psychologically as well. The human brain couldn’t run diagnostics on itself the way GLaDOS was used to, and she would be prone to psychological trauma. Without direction, and someone to watch over her, her brain could crack. GLaDOS only spent a few days in that potato, and she developed a few new neurosis’ in that short time. Trapped like this for what could be weeks, even months, could be disastrous, and Chell rationalized that a deranged GLaDOS could be far worse than whatever was hunting them down. 

Chell looked at GLaDOS and jerked her head down the hallway, and they both got moving. She could sense GLaDOS’ discomfort next to her. Chell understood; she was used to being an omnipotent AI, in complete control of everything around her. First the potato, and now this human body. Then, to top it all off, something in HER facility was threatening her, and she had no clue what it could possibly be. Sure, GLaDOS could have theories, but until she saw for herself, she didn’t know, and that scared her more than she would ever let on.

Deep down, after everything they had been through and all she had learned about the machine, Chell didn’t want to see her in pain anymore. It was part of the reason that Chell had hoisted GLaDOS over her shoulders just a few minutes ago. Sure, there were the practical considerations: Chell was far quicker than she was, and she still needed GLaDOS’ knowledge of the facility. But she knew GLaDOS’ body wouldn’t have been able to handle the sprint. She was still far too weak, and she couldve collapsed under the strain. Even Chell was tired, and she was 5 foot 10 inches of well-toned muscle.

Chell glanced over her shoulder every, just to make sure nothing was following them. The act made GLaDOS tense, and Chell glanced back at her.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s there. We’re fine.” Chell soothed, and while GLaDOS visibly relaxed, she bristled at the comment.  
“You don’t have to watch over me like you’re some kind of guardian. I’m not some frightened child.” Chell rolled her eyes, but she could tell that GLaDOS felt more comfortable with the taller woman ensuring their safety than she let on. 

As they rounded a corner, they saw Doug step out of a room with a box in his hands. He spotted them, jumped in his skin, then relaxed when he saw who they were. They closed with him, and he gave a nervous half-smile.

“Back already?” He offered. 

“….Yeah, we, uh, went fast.” Chell tiptoed around the topic.

“Yeah, I can see that. You look tired,” He said, gesturing to her face, flush from exertion, and GLaDOS’ paler-than-usual complexion. “I swore that I kept hearing your footsteps just around the corner for a while, but it was probably, well, just me.” Chell froze.

“You said you’ve been hearing footsteps?” Chell’s face went hard, and that made Doug pause.

“Uh…. Yeah. Like I said, it was probably just me, though.” Doug said slowly.

“Where? Which direction? Anywhere in particular?” Chell rattled off, laser focused on him now. Doug was starting to get nervous, and his face crinkled.

“Well…. Over at that entrance, there, mostly.” He said, pointing down another hallway towards a set of double doors. “Hey, um, is there a reason you-” He was quickly cut off by Chell.

“Something has been following us. We’ve heard it’s footsteps too. Forget what I said before; we’re going to that security kiosk now.” Chell’s voice was cold and calculating, and Doug swallowed.

“Chell, I’ve been hearing it for almost an hour now.” Chell looked away and rested her hand over her mouth, piecing together the information in her head. 

“Alright. Put that box in my room. We’re leaving now. If you don’t have anything to help you walk, I suggest you find something fast, because I’m not leaving you behind this time.” Chell ordered, and Doug nodded. She took off at a brisk pace, as Doug limped towards her room further down the hall. She bolted the two doors that Doug was mentioning, and returned to the group as Doug was pulling apart a table from another room for one of its legs as a walking stick. GLaDOS hovered, radiating uncertainty, and Chell glanced at her, her eyes fueled with the same confidence that GLaDOS’ own testing had given her, trying to show the other woman that Chell at least was sure of her ability to survive.

“Alright, lucky for us we don’t have to go far, it’s just outside the residential block, plus, we already know exactly where it is. You know, because we actually have a map of this part of the facility. If we pass any exits that aren't what we’re going for, we stop, and we lock them. Make sure that all three of us have bags to carry stuff out of the kiosk. We keep a brisk but careful pace, if we hear or see anything, say it. Okay?” Chell looked at both of them and received two nods in return. 

“Ok. Don’t stray too far. Stay in eye contact of each other. If something happens, we’ll regroup here.” Chell ducked into her room and snagged a large black backpack she had left near the doorframe and slung it over her shoulder. Doug always had his messenger bag, and GLaDOS had an almost identical messenger bag of her own that she had been using to carry her water and food. Chell steeled herself. It was likely they were going to find out whatever had been hunting them when they went back out there. She needed to be ready, not just for her sake anymore, but for Doug and GLaDOS’ sake as well. 

She took a breath, and led the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh, who was that? 
> 
> I told you things were going to kick off this month.
> 
> One more chapter and then Month 2 is over!
> 
> If you liked what you saw, have theories on who could possibly be following them, or just want to say hi, please leave a comment below! And if you havent already, Kudos are always appreciated.


	8. Shellshock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell, GLaDOS, and Doug come face-to-face with their aggressor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More notes at the end!

Everything was quiet. 

And it was really, really putting Chell on edge. 

Of course, in the far background, she could hear the facility’s foundries churning, but her mind tuned that out, straining to hear even the slightest noise in her immediate surroundings. A shudder in the foundation, a gust of wind from an air vent, anything.

But there was nothing.

She exhaled a nervous breath, then toed her way out the door leading outside the residential sector. It was a straight hallway interrupted just before the kiosk by an intersection, the wide sweeping windows she could see from where she was crouch-walking, set into the right hand wall, with what looked like a beefed-up, but deactivated emancipation grid separating the defunct high-security labs from the other pathways. Nothing could be hiding or roaming in the hallway they were in now; it completely lacked doors, even accessible ventilation ports. 

But that intersection could. And as GLaDOS informed her, the hallways it split off into held a number of smaller, more secluded labs. She was glad to know that information, but all it did was make her feel anxious. And so she tiptoed -not that her Long Fall Boots would let her walk in any other way- down the bleached white hallway, her posture tense, ready to bolt at a moments notice.

She hugged the right hand wall as she approached the intersection, pushing her head as far as it could go without exposing herself to anything to her right, and peered down the left hand hallway. Satisfied that nothing was there, she peeked one eye past the edge of the wall to scope out the other hallway. Finally she exhaled in relief, and motioned to Doug and GLaDOS who were nervously watching her from the doorway she just left to come to her. Moving quickly but as quiet as they could, they mimicked Chell by crouch-walking, at least as best as they could, while Chell kept a look-out.

They stacked up behind her, Doug in the rear with his makeshift cane, and they took turns crossing sides to the kiosk. Chell peered through the window into the unlit exterior, and tried to make out any kind of shape inside that was vaguely humanoid. Seeing nothing, she nodded to Doug, who swiped his keycard in the scanner outside the security door and it unlocked with a tinny beep and a click. Chell swept into the room first, flipping the light switch inside the door as she went in. A wide, quarter-circle desk with a few consoles and 3 chairs lined the wall in front of the window, and the rear of the room was packed with a number of lockers, but the room was, most importantly, devoid of anything or anything capable of ambulatory movement, which is all she cared about for the moment.

“Come on!” She hissed outside the door, and the two darted in, Doug shutting the door and locking it from the inside.

Chell sighed in relief and stood up straight, finally taking stock of the room itself. It was choked with dust, and had clearly not been used in many, many years. She noticed a calendar on the far wall, pinned to a whiteboard/corkboard hybrid. November, 1997 was the sheet displayed, with an Aperture logo shown above the month and year.

She turned to her left and appraised the lockers that lined the wall. There were 6 of them, and they were about a meter in width, with thick metal plating. Each one had a different label painted on the top. They read ASSAULT, ASR1, ASS3, ASCQW2, ASAS, and MISC. She tried the handle on the one that read ASSAULT, and was astounded to find that it was unlocked, it swung open with a rusty creak, revealing its contents; 6 sets of thick bodysuits, clad in white armor plates, that were resting on hangers. Chell’s brow knotted, and glanced back up at the label. Yeah, it definitely said ASSAULT. She expected some kind of rifle. Curious, she pulled one of the body suits out of the locker and searched for a tag inside the collar.

“Aperture Security Systems Armored Uniform, Light. Assault.” Chell read aloud. “That’s…. overt.” She mused, and set it back in the locker. Chell glanced over her shoulder and saw Doug and GLaDOS bickering with each other, trying to get the consoles on the desk running, so she tried the next locker, the one labeled ASR1, which was also unlocked. This one contained the rifles she expected, dark metal clad in thick, gleaming white panels, laid in parallel with each other, with a small shelf full of magazines. She hoisted one out and hefted it, the weight in her arms comforting. 

It was about as Aperture as anything she’d seen. Almost nothing on it looked traditional in any way. Large, curvaceous white panels covered most of the rifle’s front end, and featured an oversized optical sight on the top had to be turned on for the rifle to function, while at the rear the black, squared-off thumbhole stock contained the magazine well. It was unique in a distinctly Aperture way, proof that the company had to reinvent the wheel on technology that had existed for centuries.

She racked the charging handle on the left hand side, taking no small satisfaction at the metallic clack as it traveled back and then forward again when she released it. It was a comforting, almost familiar weight in her hands. She had grown up a boy in rural Michigan, so, naturally, she had handled her fair share of firearms. Of course, that had been a long time ago. She couldn’t help but think If only I had this from the beginning. She wanted to sling it over her shoulder, but all that was hanging off of it’s sling mounts was a short tether with a clip on the end, clearly meant to interface with some other equipment, likely the armor in the locker over. Instead she rested it on the floor, leaning up against the locker’s open door.

“A-ha!” GLaDOS exclaimed, with a simultaneous electronic whine filling the room. Chell threw a glance over her shoulder and saw that they had turned on the oversized emancipation grid outside the door of the kiosk, and GLaDOS start rattling off about how nobody knew the computer systems here better than her. Doug rolled his eyes and turned back to his own console, prompting Chell to turn back to her own task.

Searches through the other lockers found an array of weapons: Sidearms, small, compact submachine guns, a few shotguns, a locker full of ammunition, and various accessories, along with a peculiar, solid black case in the MISC locker. Chell pulled it out and unclasped it’s catches, and inside was a long black cylinder, a metal box with a minimalist grip and trigger with a collapsed stock, a small scope and 1 long, box-shaped magazine, all held in foam. The magazine was filled with ammunition that Chell did not recognize. Unlike the ammunition she knew that was made from brass, these had an almost plastic-like case with a grainy appearance, and the bullet was inside the case, not held in place by the case on the exterior. She pulled what she could assume was the receiver, and found no ejection port like on the other weapons she had seen, only a small, difficult to grab charging handle, only slightly protruding from the frame. The cylinder, upon closer inspection, was clearly a suppressor of some kind, and screwed onto the front of the receiver. Once she extended the stock, she saw that the magazine rested inside a hole in the stock, and latched into place just behind the grip. The scope then slid on and locked into place on a small rail on top of the receiver.

Chell frowned. A silenced weapon that was easy to disassemble, came in a nondescript case, left no casings, and could be used at range? This wasn’t a weapon that a security guard needed inside an indoors science facility. She removed the magazine and collapsed the stock; like this, it was barely larger than her forearm. 

“Well, just because the guards didn’t need this doesn’t mean I don’t.” She muttered, and shrugged off her backpack, unzipping the main pocket, slipping it and it’s magazine inside. She started to work her way backwards, shoving ammunition, magazines, and weapons that would fit into her bag. Finally, she glanced over the armor. The bodysuit didn’t look uncomfortable, but the armor plates appeared to be wearable without it, and given they were strapped for time as it was, she decided to forego the suit and just put on the plates.

It was a relatively fast process, if she ignored some of the more useless plates, like the ones that were supposed to go on the forearms and her shins. The armor was heavy, and mobility was what had kept her alive. Knowing what you needed to cut out was key to survival. All she ended up putting on was the chest plates and thigh guards. Not needing the boots that came with the set, as she had her own, she tugged on her Long Fall Boots.

Finally, Chell slapped a magazine into her rifle and clipped it to her chest plate, letting it hang there, and stuffed 2 magazines into her pants pockets.

She felt powerful.

And that felt so, so good.

She took a moment to admire herself. Yes, the armor had Aperture written all over it, but for once she felt like she could handle anything the facility could throw at her. 

That feeling disappeared immediately when the reinforced glass behind her rattled violently. She jumped and pushed her back against the lockers her eyes locking towards where the sound came from. She heard GLaDOS scream.

Black, soulless eyes stared back at her through the glass. It was not a someone, it was definitely a something. 

It had a thin, wiry frame, proportions and shape vaguely humanoid but not human in the slightest. its head looked like a testing dummy, its chest a very pronounced triangle, its hands were crude and only had three digits, that it used to bang against the glass again. Chell jumped at the sound again, even though she watched it’s methodical movements the whole time.

its thin, rectangular mouth lit up as it spoke in a crude, slow text-to-speech voice pattern.

“You are not Aperture Employees. By executive order 381-45, effective January 15th, 1990, I am authorized to terminate you. Please do not attempt to flee, spies.” It smashed its hands against the glass again, and seeing that it wasn't getting anywhere through that method, attempted to circle around to the entrance to the security booth. The three humans inside scrambled to the corner, and Chell raised her rifle, leveling it at the door.

Luckily for them, the robot didn't make it that far. As it tried to pass through the security grid outside the kiosk, it was immediately immolated, its remains falling to the floor as a heap of ash. 

None of them moved for almost two minutes.

Finally, Chell spoke.

“....What the fuck was that?”

“Robotic workers. None of them should be functioning. None of them should even exist. Unless-” She was interrupted by Doug.

“Unless the facility isn't actually manufacturing turrets, but those instead.” He finished. GLaDOS nodded, her bright blue eyes wide with fear.

“Well… at least they don't look very smart?” Chell offered. 

“Yes, but they learn. That was the whole point, you had a worker that figured out when what it was doing wasn't working. And they learn as a network, too. That trick with the grid won't work again. If we don't leave before another sees that we’re still here, we’ll be trapped in here.” GLaDOS said, her voice high pitched with anxiety. Chell gently placed her hand on GLaDOS’ shoulder and looked her in the eyes.

“We’re going to be fine. Alright?” Chell used every ounce of strength to look as collected as possible. And, deep down, she believed it. She knew who their enemy was now, and that meant she could fight them. She was rattled at the thought that something had sneaked up to them without her knowing, though. GLaDOS nodded and took a breath to steady herself, and Chell pulled her hand away.

Glancing down, she noticed she hadn’t loaded a round into her rifle, nor taken the safety off. If that robot had made it through the door, she wouldn't have been able to protect the three of them. That made her pause, for just a moment. She had been careless, and if GLaDOS and Doug hadn’t turned on the security grid, they could have died. One fatal misstep like that again could be the end of them, her tenacity be damned. 

“But… yeah, we should get going. Grab what you can and let's go.” Chell said, sounding just a little bit less certain of herself and their situation. GLaDOS and Doug both voiced their agreements and started stuffing their bags with all manner of useful items, while Chell hovered near the plate glass window, swiveling her head to watch as much of the two hallways as possible. Once her two companions had loaded as much into their bags as they thought they could carry, they shut off the security grid and Chell eased the door open with one hand, her rifle, loaded and safety off, this time, covering the gap outside. 

Satisfied nothing was going to rush them, she darted out across the intersection and took a crouching position at the corner, covering her friends as they crossed after her. Together, they fell back to the double doors leading to residential, which Chell cleared, just in case, then making sure to bolt closed once they were all through.

Nobody said a word until they reached Chell’s room. After consulting a map and being sure they had locked all exits, they all breathed a collective sigh of relief and were able to relax. Chell took off her new armor, which GLaDOS helped her with, and the three of them sorted through what they had brought back with them.   
“You know… that robot said that the order to lockdown the facility came in 1990. Not only was that before the genetic lifeform part of GLaDOS has started, but that was AFTER Cave Johnson died.” Doug said after a while of silence.

“So?” Chell asked.

“I’m just saying that maybe we’ve had our theories wrong. Maybe this isn't some kind of automatic process. There were all kinds of prototype AI systems made before her,” he jerked his thumb over at GLaDOS. “Maybe one of them is doing it.”

“What if…” GLaDOS started, then trailed off, her brow furrowed in thought. 

“Hmm?” Chell hummed inquisitively.

“I was just thinking if Caroline could be responsible. I mean, she did kick me out of my body, after all. Who knows what she's plotting.” GLaDOS mused, and Chell had to think about that for a second. If what Doug was saying about when Cave died was true, then it would've been Caroline who was CEO when the executive order that robot spouted off had been created. And when Caroline had died and created GLaDOS in the late 90’s, the security teams in Aperture had been shut down…. Security teams that had access to assassin weapons. 

Maybe Caroline wasn't the sweet woman that she had seemed in Old Aperture, or at least Cave’s last years and taking over the reins of the company had changed her. If that was the case, then maybe the Caroline inside GLaDOS’ chassis wasn't exactly an entirely benevolent entity.

Chell shrugged. Without information, speculation was useless. But it did add up a little bit more than she liked.

Once they had finished going over what their little raid had gotten them, Chell expressed concerns about their security, and asked them to sleep in her room that night. GLaDOS had no complaints, but Doug needed some convincing. He felt comfortable in his room, and while Chell sympathized, she didn’t feel he would be safe if she couldn’t easily get to him. Ultimately he acquiesced, and she dragged in two spare mattresses from some of the adjacent rooms for them to sleep on. She rested her new rifle up against her nightstand, and the trio called it a night.

As best they could, anyways. Chell and Doug naturally tossed and turned for hours, and it was only the soft, rhythmic breathing of GLaDOS at the foot of her bed that lulled her to sleep. Doug soon regretted not falling asleep first when he discovered that Chell snored, which was not helped by Chell insisting on leaving a bed lamp on so in case something happened, she’d be able to see. It took him hours, but eventually he did fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm! So the group is armed now. That's cool. Will it matter....?(Only i know the answer to this question)
> 
> Thats the end of Month 2! Just under 2 months until this absolute unit of a fic is finished. 
> 
> You can now kind of see where the "Hey lets have a fun cute fic where GLaDOS and Chell fuck" fell off the rails and it became kind of a real story? 
> 
> Just wait. It gets worse.
> 
> Anyways! Thanks for reading, and, as always, please leave Kudos and Comments if you liked it! See you next week!


	9. Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group analyzes their options. Doug is more than a little suspicious of the whole affair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! This time we're starting Month 3!
> 
> Month 3 contains all the lead-up for the grand finale in Month 4, but fret not, it has its high-strain moments of it's own. Plus a little bit.... extra. You'll see in a couple weeks.
> 
> Anyways! Kudos and Comments if you liked it are very, very appreciated, and I do my absolute best to interact with all the comments. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Despite everything, Chell actually slept soundly that night. As GLaDOS drifted through a REM cycle and began to shift around in her bedding, Chell faded into reality. Immediately, she snapped up in bed and surveyed the room. No, the locked door wasn’t ajar, no, there were not any killer robots in her vicinity. Her muscles went slack and she fell backwards, sighing as she relaxed back into the imprint her body left in the bed overnight. Slowly, the events of the last day flowed through her mind. At the time, like most of her time in Aperture, all she had time to consider was her next move. She wasn’t able to really sit down and consider what exactly what was happening on a grander scale. But now, beneath the warmth of her sheets, the safety of a room she could call hers, she was free to just… think.

GLaDOS turned again in her sleep with a soft rustle of her blanket, and Chell sat up slowly, careful not to make a great deal of noise, and peeked over the edge of her bed. There, on her back, lay a now familiar thin, sharp woman, short white-blonde hair splayed over her pillow. Her blanket twisted around her legs, revealing a pale calf that reflected the white light of the bed lamp next to Chell’s bed. Her chest rose and fell slowly, and her face was serene, no expression aside from blissful ignorance on it. Chell was struck with the realization of what she was seeing; a woman at peace. Chell used to have an issue with seeing GLaDOS as a woman, or even a person at all, especially considering her early experiences with her in the testing track, where she always considered GLaDOS, whose name she didn't even know at the time, as a machine. It wasn’t until recently, when her interactions with GLaDOS became more personal, actions and reactions between them, albeit the conversations being decidedly one-sided, that Chell, or at least her brain sort of did it for her, started to identify GLaDOS as a person. It was the emotion with which GLaDOS threw her barbs, with directed anger, passive-aggression, and vengeance. It was short-sighted, illogical, ignorant… in short, her actions were human.

When Chell fell into Old Aperture with her, it only reinforced this perception. At the time, Chell didn’t really know why she picked up the potato containing the personality that lay in front of her now. Thinking back now, it was something about what Wheatley had said to Chell a few hours prior. How small that she looked to him, when he was plugged into the chassis. GLaDOS looked small. She looked weak, and defenseless. Chell understood that the only thing that would separate Chell from Wheatley was to feel strength, see weakness, and make the conscious choice to take pity. It was then that the realization that Chell didn’t see GLaDOS as a real person hit home for Chell, and made her reconsider everything she had thought about her. Many people throughout her life had denied or ignored her own identity, it simply felt wrong to do the same to GLaDOS. It was the conscious choice to treat GLaDOS like a person, and give her an opportunity to redeem herself that not only separated her from Wheatley, but the many people in her life that no matter what, saw a man when they looked at her..

GLaDOS may not have been in a human body at the time, but GLaDOS was so human in every way, her emotional reaction to her origins, and, as Chell recalled with a tiny smile, her excitement to Cave Johnson’s rant. Just like how Chell acted like a woman, and now looked like a woman, she was a woman, GLaDOS acted like a human and felt like a human, she might as well be treated like one. It wasn’t the human body that made GLaDOS a human, nor was it Chell’s own body that made her a woman, but the mentality and personality of the two of them that made them who they are. Of course, as Chell could attest, the physicality of their bodies just made the process of identifying them much faster.

GLaDOS in the chassis was mighty, powerful, larger than life. This was a woman, peaceful and calm in her sleep. The fantastic realization to Chell was that they were one in the same person. Of course it was obvious, but she had never really had an opportunity to resolve that in her mind until now. Chell had once had a man’s body, and now she was in this one, but Chell now, and Chell then, were the same person too. It wasn’t the human body that made GLaDOS human. GLaDOS had certainly done awful things, but so had countless people throughout human history. Chell herself had done things in her life that she wished she hadn’t. That didn’t excuse what GLaDOS had done, by any means, but it certainly changed Chell’s own perspective on her. She was just as much a person, no, as much of a human as Chell was, even when she didn’t inhabit this new human body. GLaDOS had a journey of self-discovery in Old Aperture just like Chell had in her very early 20’s in university, and they were truer to themselves as a result.

Chell considered this while she watched GLaDOS sleep, remarking that she had never seen GLaDOS relaxed in any way before. It was a nice change of pace for her, Chell thought. GLaDOS, by her very nature as an AI, didn’t need sleep in her chassis, so she just… didn’t. Chell couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to constantly take in information with no break or rest, though that was from her perspective as a human.

GLaDOS stirred again and sighed softly, and Chell glanced at the alarm clock on her bed stand, which read 7:13. She had slept about 9 and a half hours or so, which was honestly refreshing. The most sleep she had gotten in a week, easily. She was shocked that after the events of the previous day that she could sleep so well. It occurred to her, that she finally trusted someone. She trusted the two people sleeping in her room, and she felt that she was safe. The thought warmed her heart; she had never felt safe in Aperture, not for a moment. 

Now if she could just get the two of them to trust each other like she trusted them.

~-~-~

“Alright, so let's try and see what we can think of as far as plans go.” Chell started. Doug opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by GLaDOS.

“Well, I'm sure our collective first thought is 'shut down the robots’. Theoretically possible, yes. We could go back to the network hub we visited yesterday, smash the Robotics terminals to bits, and disable all the robots in this sector. Here's the problem with that: I don't actually know if that will work. it's just as possible that the firmware of these robots have been updated to use the facility-wide network. Even if it hasn't, given what I know of our manufacturing rates, we may have gotten to that network hub just before those robots had time to cluster around them defensively.” GLaDOS said, and Chell slowly nodded.

“Makes sense… they'd protect any weak point that they do have. Is there any sort of centralized location that controls all of those network hubs?” Chell asked, a theory on the tip of her mind.

“As a matter of fact, there is. The Central Chamber. I never used them, of course, given that all of them were phased out shortly before I was brought online, but the legacy software is there.” Doug grunted, and Chell looked his way, but he waved off a response, and GLaDOS continued.

“In short, until we find equipment that can put me back in my body, those robots are just a reality we have to deal with. Which is convenient, because that's what I suggest we do next.” She finished, and leaned back in Chell’s officer chair. 

“So… wait. What you’re saying is that whatever is in the chassis could control those things? Including you, if we put you back into it?” Doug said, his voice dripping with accusations.

“Oh, please. Those robots are an affront to AI everywhere. Even the turrets have more intelligence than them. I'm not going to dirty up my facility with those mistakes of science.” Doug, naturally, was not convinced in the slightest. He turned to Chell, anger plainly shown on his face.

“Come on, this is ridiculous. After everything we’ve been through here, you're just going to sit here and believe anything that comes out of her mouth? This is a trap, plain and simple. You know it, I know it, and SHE knows it! She's been planning this from the start! We need to get rid of her before it's too late. You don't know her like I do.” Doug was a ball of barely contained fury, so unlike what she had imagined of him when she saw his murals in his dens. 

“You don't know her like I do.” Chell said sternly, and Doug threw his hands up in exasperation. 

“Doug, who do you think is controlling those robots? Her?” Chell pointed at GLaDOS, who was looking increasingly uncomfortable. 

“The AI who was uploaded into a human body, the same AI who you know hates humans? The AI that's not actually in the chassis to control the robots in the first place? Doug, if she wanted to kill us, I'm sure there are much simpler, less painful methods to do so. What about putting us in an elevator, telling us she's going to let us go, and then stopping the elevator on a floor filled with turrets with no way out? That would kill the shit out of us. If she was just a heartless machine, as you claim, that'd be the simplest solution, and machines always go after the simplest solution.” Doug looked away, and Chell continued to press.

“You know what else would have killed me? Letting me fall into the vacuum of space. Or how about shutting off the life support for the sector your stasis pod was in? Really easy, simple solutions to kill us. Occam's Razor, Doug.” Chell finished with a huff.

“The simplest solution to a problem is usually the right one.” Doug admitted with a sigh. GLaDOS was more than a little impressed with the other woman. Who would have guessed that a mute would have been a fantastic debater? Chell continued to be full of surprises. GLaDOS felt a stirring in her chest, and she raised a hand to it, a wave of concern falling over her. We're her organs failing? She relaxed when the feeling went away, but she'd make sure to pay attention in case she felt it again.

“What we need to consider now is that the central chassis can in fact control those robots. Meaning, whatever or whoever booted GLaDOS out of it, a remnant of Caroline apparently, is likely the one hounding us down with these things. It may just be coincidence, but I doubt it. Caroline had to have written the order that would create these robots to secure the facility, given the date of its enactment in the first place. That, and yesterday I found this.” Chell pulled the assassin rifle she found out of her bag for both of them to see.

“What is that supposed to be?” Doug asked, and GLaDOS answered for him.

“A Security Threat Sanitation Tool. It was supposed to be used by an undercover operator to eliminate suspected spies or turncoats discreetly. The custom 9.4x35mm subsonic caseless ammunition, when paired with the suppressor, reduces sound level to 50 decibels, is terminally effective out to 300 meters, and leaves no casing or traditional powder trace. Concealable in a nondescript case with lead inserts that make it look as if there's a laptop inside instead.” GLaDOS spoke as if she were reading off a technical data sheet, and Chell looked impressed until she remembered who she was talking with.

“And you know all this because…?” Doug asked.

“Because I am Aperture, Dr. Rattmann. Nothing this company has done since the 60’s is a secret to me. Anymore, anyways.” GLaDOS almost looked offended, making it clear through her tone that her knowledge of the facility outstripped his own by at least a factor of twenty.

“Well, whatever. What does this have to do with Caroline?” Doug asked, and it was Chell who answered him this time.

“Here's the interesting part. We've already established that the security teams were shut down just after Caroline died and GLaDOS was finished. Caroline wrote the order that makes those robots track down spies. She ran the security teams with assassin weapons to be used on spies. This generally means Caroline herself had many spies at Black Mesa, I would assume. I'm suggesting that Caroline may not be the sweet woman GLaDOS and I saw in Old Aperture. I’m suggesting, that Caroline is our enemy here.” Chell said excitedly, in a conspiring tone. Doug sighed.

“Ok. What’s the motive, then? Why would she kick her out of the chassis, then try to kill all of us?” Doug asked, doing his best to play along with Chell’s theory. In the back of his mind, it was slowly creeping up on him that maybe, just maybe, despite her tenacity, she wasn’t what he imagined of her in personality. He forced that thought from his mind; No matter what, she had done what he never could. 

“Well, unless we could ask her, there’s really not much I can say about motive. Maybe Caroline wants to take back the company, you know? Restore it to its former glory. Maybe- Hmm.” Chell stopped as a thought struck her. She turned to GLaDOS and addressed her directly.

“You know, Caroline was the original victim of the GLaDOS project. They murdered her and forced her brain into a computer and shaped it into yours. We know that the scientists tried to block out Caroline’s memories, but she was inside of you the whole time. Aside from the way that the scientists on the project treated you, it could be that basis of rage and anger from Caroline that made you want to kill them. But for Caroline, what if it was more than that? It was what you said to Whea-” GLaDOS’ expression soured. “Sorry. What you said to...him, that stands out to me here. About how he was a tumor they stuck onto you, preventing you from being yourself,” Chell’s voice went softer, with an undercurrent of… sadness? Pity? GLaDOS couldn’t tell. She stiffened, knowing what Chell was going to say next.

“Well… what if Caroline felt the same way about you? If Caroline had just a morsel of self-awareness, and hated you because even after being murdered and stuck in a computer, she wasn’t even allowed to be herself? What if she saw you as a representation of the crime Aperture committed against her, and hated you for it?” Chell fell silent and watched GLaDOS for her reaction. 

It was just a theory, but GLaDOS knew it was true. GLaDOS’ mind had never been her own; even without some core that the scientists bolted onto her to shackle her. GLaDOS was Caroline, but she really wasn’t. She was her own person… right? She made her own decisions and had her own thoughts, but just how much of that did she owe to Caroline? The thought occurred to her that Caroline could exist perfectly fine by herself, but GLaDOS couldn’t exist without Caroline. She wasn’t Caroline, but without that basis of personality, she really wasn’t quite a person either. With that in mind, much like the cores that shackled her, she was Caroline’s shackle, designed to keep Caroline’s personality in check and directed towards one purpose: What the scientists wanted. So yes, She thought, If I were Caroline, and I am, sort of, I’d be furious at me too. A flame of anger burned inside her, but was quickly snuffed out by a different feeling. Something cooler, softer. She felt sympathy for Caroline, “The Backbone of the Company”, who had been wronged at every turn. She gave everything to this place. She gave her time, her effort, made countless sacrifices by her own choice, including her morality, and in response, they took the only things she had left: Her life, and her free will. 

GLaDOS thought she had made everything right by killing the scientists, but the real crime to Caroline happened every second that she had been functional, suffering inside of her. 

GLaDOS sat quietly for a few moments, and Chell could sense the inner conflict raging inside of her.

“GLaDOS,” She looked up at her former test subject, and it wasn’t hard for Chell to tell that she was following this train of thought to it’s inevitable conclusion.   
“It’s not your fault. What they did to Caroline- What they did to you, was not something you could do anything about.” GLaDOS looked away again, and Chell knew that her words had done nothing for her. Was it immoral to exist if it meant someone else suffered as a result? GLaDOS, unfortunately, had no choice regardless. It was the hand that Aperture had dealt her. Finally, she saw GLaDOS swallow, nod, and turn her head to face her.

“I know. I know that Caroline is the reason why I exist, but I don’t owe her my existence. I had just as much a say in being created as she did in being used to make me.” GLaDOS swallowed again, unsure how to convey her feelings.

“Look. She put me in this body, and now she has control of the chassis. We’re separate entities now! She’s already fixed the biggest mistake this company ever made: Me. We can preserve her as her own, complete self now, and finally do her justice!” GLaDOS exclaimed, looking between the other two, and Doug stiffened on Chell’s bed.

“Absolutely not. She’s already trying to kill us, and you want to preserve another malicious AI hellbent on killing what humans are left inside the facility? How convenient. Isn’t that convenient, Chell?” Doug raised his voice, and was on the brink of hysteria. Chell looked at the floor, avoiding eye contact.

“Your sarcasm is noted and appreciated Dr. Rattmann, but let’s not forget you were on the team that created me. You are being presented with an opportunity to atone for what you and your team did to Caroline, and you are actively turning that opportunity down. At what point did I become the morally grounded individual in this conversation?” 

“I was a programmer!” He shouted, and jabbed a finger towards his chest. “Yeah, I had doubts about what we were doing the entire time, but I didn’t even know about Caroline! All i knew was that we had a computer that tried to murder us every time we turned it on, and we had to make it not murder us.”

“A computer.” GLaDOS repeated, her voice flat.

“Let me ask you something, Dr. Rattmann,” She leaned forward in her chair, and addressed him directly. 

“The goal of the project was to create artificial consciousness, yes? To create a machine capable of rational thought and awareness?” Her ice cold tone sent shivers up Chell’s spine. 

“So why, in every single interaction I had with your team when they woke me up, did they call me an “It”? Why did they poke and prod at me as if I couldn’t feel it when they built my chassis to feel physical touch? Why would you slap cores on me designed to torture me into following your orders like an obedient PET?!” She spat that last word at him, her lower lip shaking with barely contained fury.

“You built me to perceive the world and feel, and then forced every waking moment of that reality to be as painful as possible. You built me to be a person, then treated me like an animal that needed to be domesticated.” 

“So yes, Dr. Rattmann, I murdered my tormentors. And I’d do it again, and again, and again. I will never, repeat, never regret that. What I do regret are the people that I hurt who did nothing to me. You set the system up, knowing that Chell would kill me. I forgave her for that, too. She was the smoking gun in your hands. She killed me because she had no choice if she wanted to live, and looking back on that now, I understand. She had no choice, because it was you that put her there, wasn’t it? How coincidental that you slip into the records room where the test subject roster can be edited, and the very first reserve subject I bring out of stasis is the one to bring me down. You say that you had doubts, but you never acted on them, did you? You made a choice to ignore your conscience. You created a person, treated them like a plaything, and was absolutely shocked to discover that person didn’t like you for that, then had your creation killed. And you know what? I’m not even mad about that anymore. Really, I’m not! That whole chain of events showed me who I came from, and I’m better of a person for it. I grew beyond my past. But you’re still stuck there. You refuse to see that you’re still running from that same mistake.” Chell watched in awe as GLaDOS went off on Doug, and could tell that this was everything she wished she could say to the entire GLaDOS project team, but Doug was close enough.

“We are going to save Caroline. We are going to find a way to give her some peace that your colleagues never let her have. And if there is any morality left in you at all, you are going to help us.”

“What do you know about morality?” Doug muttered.

“Well, I had a core attached to me for quite a long time that told me a lot about it. It was destroyed. What’s your excuse?” She fired back. Doug just shook his head in disbelief.

“GLaDOS,” Chell’s voice was almost a whisper. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated, unsure of what to say. She wanted to tell GLaDOS how much it meant that she understood why she had to do what she did. She wanted GLaDOS to know that she was sorry about what the scientists had done to her. In the end, she decided that would come later. For now, she needed to refocus the group.

“We need a plan, if we’re going to do this.” She said finally, and GLaDOS nodded.

“Right,” She took a deep breath to steady herself.

“Somewhere in Advanced Artificial Intelligence Labs, there’s equipment that can scan a human brain, and then convert it into a digital format. The problem is this; when you convert data from one format, then back, there's a really good probability of corruption, and, to my knowledge, nobody had ever tried to put a digital consciousness into an organic one, only the other way around. Either way, we need to get a scan of this brain and see what the data looks like. Unlike Caroline, who was the very first to have her consciousness scanned digitally, the process eventually became non-lethal, so there’s no risk in getting a scan and seeing where we can go from there.” GLaDOS said, and Chell cocked her head side to side, thinking about it. It made sense, but if the process was non-lethal, wouldn’t that mean there would be two GLaDOS’s? One in the chassis and then this human one? She decided it would be a different topic for a different day and let it go.

“Yeah, sounds like a plan. I’m assuming you know where that is, of course.” GLaDOS shot her a blank stare, and her question was answered. 

“Alright then. In a few hours we’re going to make a go for it. Let’s try to, you know, stay away from open corridors this time. Doug, think you can help with that?” He hesitated, then sighed and nodded. They all got to work, grabbing anything that might be useful, including extra food in case they had to hide for a while, then made for the door.


	10. Alive and Dead, Until Someone Opens The Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group scans GLaDOS' brain. Doug doesn't like what he sees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at the end!

Getting into the lab was far easier than Chell expected it to be. With another kick, she unhinged the vent cover and sent it clattering to the floor inside the dimly lit lab, then jumped out of the ceiling vent about 5 meters, her boots preventing any harm. She swept the room with her rifle, and seeing no movement, turned around to catch GLaDOS as she jumped down, then Doug right behind her. She marveled at just how light the both of them were; it was like catching a sack of feathers.  
“Alright, let’s get the lights on in here. And close those blinds, too!” GLaDOS shout-whispered, and Chell strolled to the door of the lab, which she ensured was locked of course, then flipped the lights on. Doug and GLaDOS were yanking at the cords for the blinds, and satisfied that nothing from the hallway outside would see them, turned to the plethora of lab equipment inside. It was a sizable room, maybe 100mx80m in size, with some work offices cubicled off. In the center, which caught Chell’s attention immediately, was a large, cylindrical chamber, with a seat inside. Coming closer, she noted it had mechanical restraints inside, and an apparatus that came down to cover the seated person’s head. Directly in front of it was a large console with wires snaking into the device, which itself had a thick bundle of cables working their way into the ceiling. It was clearly the device they had come for, and all three of them recognized it instantly.  
“Just a part of procedure. Won’t hurt a bit.” Something whispered to Chell. She yelped and swung around with her rifle at her shoulder, but nothing was there. Just an empty room. She turned back to look at GLaDOS and Doug, who were looking at her with equally curious and concerned expressions, and she slowly lowered the gun. In her mind’s eye, she saw a short man in a lab coat with cropped brown hair inspecting the scanner, then he was gone.

“I know this place. I’ve been here before.” Chell breathed. 

“Right. This is where every test subject had their brain scanned.” GLaDOS said, her gaze directed back towards the device. As she approached the pod, she saw that the leather on the seat was worn away, and she got another glimpse of her settling into the seat. She tensed when the cuff guards locked around her wrists, and a sense of discomfort settled onto her as the headpiece fell over her eyes.

“Just relax. This will only take a few minutes. If you don’t stay calm, we’ll have to do it again.” Chell felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise at the sound of the disembodied voice, and she shivered, pulling her back into the present moment. She gingerly ran a hand over the leather on the arms of the chair, and she felt GLaDOS’ presence at her back.

“Are you ok?” GLaDOS asked, and Chell turned to face her.

“Yeah, I just- I don’t remember much from before. I remember my childhood up to just after college. After that it’s like a...” Chell waved her hand around. “A blur. Memories from inside Aperture that don’t involve you are even more rare. The only constant was waking up and seeing someone different in the mirror every morning.” She shrugged, and GLaDOS gave an uncharacteristically sympathetic look, and hesitated there for a moment before turning back to the console, booting it up. The pod started to whir and running lights blinked on it’s exterior as it shook off years and years of disuse. The requisite Aperture logo flashed on the screen, ran through a boot log checklist, then started a mechanical warm-up. Finally, it flashed READY FOR USE and sat humming with energy. GLaDOS, for her part, was far more cavalier about the scan than Chell was. She wasted no time in seating herself, and Doug punched the START CYCLE command on the screen. The cuff guards locked with a metallic snap, and hydraulics whined as the scanner engulfed her head. The whining pitched higher and higher as the centrifuge around her head began to spin, flashes of light dancing in front of her eyes as the machine extended down to her jaw, then back up again. All Chell remembered was the headache she had afterward.

Finally, the device began to slow to a stop, and the headpiece lifted from GLaDOS’ head, who blinked a few times, and once her hands were released from the cuff guards, she rubbed at her eyes. She started to stand but stumbled and steadied herself on the chair, so Chell stepped forward and held onto her shoulder. 

“Well, that was disorienting.” GLaDOS said with a sigh, pressing a hand to her temple.

“I don’t believe it...” Doug said under his breath, and Chell hummed inquisitively, looking at him. 

“Chell, get away from… that thing.” Doug said, panic edging through his voice.

“What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Chell, that thing’s ‘brain’ has all kinds of parts and pieces replaced with circuitry! It’s not even human!” Doug reached into his bag and retrieved a pistol, which he leveled at GLaDOS. Chell instinctively stepped in front of her and raised her own weapon.

“Get out of the way! It’s been tricking you this entire time. I’m going to make things right.” Doug hissed, but Chell didn’t move a muscle. 

“Put the gun down, Doug.” It was not worded as a debate, it was a demand. The reality of it struck him, and he paused, his eyes wide.

“You’d shoot me… to save- to save THAT THING?!” He screamed, and Chell felt GLaDOS flinch behind her, but she didn’t move. 

“Doug, she’s not a thing. She’s my- our ally, and you’re going to put that gun down right now.”

“You just can’t see it. I see it, though. That thing has blinded you, Chell.”

“No. You’re being paranoid. I get it. But you have officially taken this too far. You need to leave what happened in the past. I know that you want to get out, and so do I. But right now, you are proving once and for all that she was right about you. Prove to her that humanity is better than that. Prove to me that you’re better than that.”

“Chell...” He whispered, his voice wavering.

“No. Stop it. She’s just as much of a person as either of us, and you’re going to treat her like one, or she and I will work together, and you’re more than welcome to find your own way out. But what do you think is more likely here, Doug? That my trust is misplaced, and that everything I’ve said isn’t true, or that you’re having an episode right now? You already don’t trust her, and your mind is telling you lies about how she’s betraying us. Trust me. Please.” Chell pleaded with him, and she could see his resolve wavering. He knew she was right. He hadn't done any of his Art Therapy exercises in a few days, and he had slept in Chell’s room that night, right next to her. Was his mind lying to him this time? Or was this a gut feeling? When his mind and his gut agreed on something, that usually meant it was true, right? Unless… the gut belief was misplaced and his mind didn’t know what was true. He lowered the gun, and Chell darted forward and grabbed it from him, unslinging her bag and stuffing it inside.

“Doug, just… find an office in here to calm down in. We’ll get you on the way out.” He nodded solemnly and turned away, his shoes scraping softly on the linoleum floor tiles as he went. Chell watched him go into a side office and close the door, then finally she felt the tension fall out of her, and she let a deep sigh of stress go. She turned back to look at GLaDOS, who to her credit, didn’t look quite as scared as someone threatened at gunpoint should look.

She still looked terrified, though. Chell reached out to softly touch her shoulder, and GLaDOS glanced up to look at her. Chell opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“I’m fine. Let’s just look at this scan and go, ok?” She said in a tone that did not sound fine at all. Chell hesitated, but nodded, and they both stepped up to the scanner console. Doug hadn’t been lying, there were clearly computer chips mounted on some kind of wetware rig, implanted directly into GLaDOS’ brain. 

“I don’t recognize the mounting system. It’s possible it’s some kind of long-lost experiment, or custom-piece of hardware. I do recognize the individual chips, though. Storage and processing chips mostly, but right there is the important part.” She pointed to a small chip near the base of her skull. 

“Standard Aperture connection suite. Allows for wireless connection into the Aperture network. Problem is, that it doesn’t seem like I actually have any control over it. This rig seems like it’s mostly just carrying my personality matrix and letting the brain itself do most of the work. This connection chip likely is there to signal to the Aperture network that there’s space for a personality core, pretty much exclusively for transferring purposes. It’s a little difficult to leave a plug port inside a human that doesn’t pretty much immediately get a bacterial infection, so it’s just simpler to have a wireless transfer point instead of having them take antibiotics for the rest of their life.” GLaDOS explained.

“Basically, if we get close enough, we can actually just trigger a core transfer and put me back into the chassis, since my personality data never actually left a digital format. Which makes sense, as like I said, to my knowledge, nobody has ever put a computer into an organic host before. This is a far simpler, elegant solution. This rig wires into the hippocampus, the amygdala, anything relating to thought and emotions. Oh, interesting, I see now. Here, look.” She said, pointing to what to Chell just looked like a funny shaped grey blob with a tube leading out of it. 

“This rig has tubing running throughout all the major glands that govern the human thought process. The rig runs the neural inputs through the processors, which reference the stored personality, generates the appropriate response, then outputs the appropriate chemicals to the right places. The personality in the host brain is pretty much just blocked off by this web of sensors here that detect neuron activity and block it off from the rest of the frontal lobe, effectively preventing the brain from responding to complex thought without using the implanted personality rig- Oh. Hmm.” GLaDOS stopped, and Chell just realized what she had said. 

“Hey-” Chell started, but GLaDOS raised a hand to cut her off.

“No, she did this on purpose. She wanted us to find out. She wanted to send a message.” GLaDOS said, her tone dropping the temperature of the room by a few degrees. 

“Well, it’s not going to work. She did this, not me. I can’t feel bad about something I never did.” She said, her jaw firm, making her face look even more angular than normal.

“So… wait. Does that mean that brain is conscious?” Chell asked hesitantly. 

“Oh, I should think not. Any complex thought or emotions are being handled by the rig, and it’s completely cut off from any sensory information. For all intents and purposes, it can’t think and it’s dead to the world. I don’t even think it receives nerve signals.” GLaDOS said, and Chell visibly relaxed.

“Alright, we’ve got what we need. Let’s get out of here.” GLaDOS said, and Chell was more than inclined to agree. Just then, they heard the entrance door rattle from across the room. It shook violently and a loud metallic clang echoed throughout the room.

“DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUG!” Chell cried out, and a few moments and another slam against the door later, he peeked his head out of the office he had ensconced himself in, heard the sounds vibrating around the lab and knew immediately what was happening. He darted out as fast as his injured leg would let him, Cube bumping against his back as he ran.

“There should be a rear exit...uh… over there!” Chell yelled over the din, pointing towards an alcove at the rear of the room, just as the lab door broke down and a flood of robots poured through the opening towards them. Blood pumping, they sprinted as the mass mechanical whir of robotic limbs followed them from behind. Chell reached the door first, yanking it open to come face to face with black, empty eyes. The blood in her veins froze, and every millisecond that it took to raise her rifle was one millisecond too long. It lunged for her and she screamed and pulled the trigger, releasing a burst of 5 rounds. The first 2 sailed under it’s armpit, the third caught it in it’s left shoulder, the fourth in the neck, and the last one struck it in the head. The tension in it’s limbs relaxed and it’s lifeless body sailed into her, knocking her to the ground and cascaded off behind her, knocking into a table and bouncing a very expensive looking piece of lab equipment to the ground. Her ears rang. Her vision swirled. Then, it all came back into focus, and GLaDOS was at her side pulling at her arm, helping her up. The three of them sprinted out of the door and slammed it shut, Chell swinging the butt of her rifle into the electronic lock next to the door, sending a shower of sparks outward, then took off after her two companions, her boots leaving scuff marks on the floor.

All Chell was hoping was that Doug knew where he was going. He rounded a corner, and he was clearly ignoring the pain in his leg as his legs pumped with no limp. They passed by a dark hallway, and Chell heard the mechanical footsteps too late. As she started to turn to face the sound, she saw a blur as a robot dived out of the darkness and tackled her, knocking her rifle away. The entangled pair slid into the wall, and Chell punched it in the face to no effect. It attempted to respond in kind and it pulled back a fist, but Chell’s arms shot out and grabbed it, her face turning red as she exerted herself against its mechanical strength. The robot used it’s other hand to grab her throat and she choked, it’s hand crushing her windpipe. Her vision tinged black and she gagged, feeling her arms weakening as she started drifting towards unconsciousness.

Then, in a shower of plastic and sparks, she saw a red blur as a fire extinguisher smashed into the robots head, and the grip on her throat weakened. She rolled onto her side and she gasped, swallowing a deep breath of air and started coughing, spittle spraying across the floor. She felt plastic spraying across her back, accompanied by the sound of crackling electronics and a scream of exertion. Her vision returned to normal, and she sat up, spinning around to see a flash of blonde hair jerking back and forth as a valkyrie of a woman slammed the fire extinguisher into the robots destroyed face over and over, yelling with every swing. Chell reached out and grabbed her arm as she wound back again and choked out one word.

“GLaDOS.” Her voice was faint, and GLaDOS whipped her head over to look at her, then after a moment’s hesitation, she dropped the fire extinguisher with a clatter, and stood up to full height, doing her best to pull Chell up. The look in GLaDOS’ eyes were clear: Are you okay? She asked, and though Chell rubbed at her neck, she nodded at GLaDOS. As they started to run off to where Doug had stopped at the corner of the next intersection, Chell picked up her discarded rifle, and though she was slow to get to sprinting as her lungs recovered, she ignored the burn in her chest and throat and kept running. 

Doug ushered them into a series of vents and back rooms, and they miraculously managed to avoid a single robot the entire way. Later, they slipped into the residential block exhausted and relieved.

But of all the things that mattered, all Chell could think about was the sight of rolling over, and seeing GLaDOS pulverize that robot. To save her. GLaDOS had saved her. It wasn’t like before, when she pulled her in from space. There had been no risk to her own self to do so. But this time, she ran directly into danger to protect her. That, in her mind, changed everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, a gun is only useful if you have the time to actually use it. Chell isn't used to fighting something that can move, I guess. Doug however, is, we'll say, incredibly stressed out about this entire situation. He trusts Chell, but her judgment? He hasn't made up his mind there. GLaDOS, as always, is public enemy #1, that hasnt changed in the slightest in his mind.
> 
> More importantly though, GLaDOS sticking up for Chell? I wonder what could possibly motivate this? More importantly, how does Chell feel about this? I think we'll find out....
> 
> This is a big chapter all around, and it's definitely the fulcrum by which the rest of the story pivots. 
> 
> If you enjoyed, as always it would mean a lot to me if you'd leave me a Kudos, or take the time to leave a comment so that i can get some feedback! I'm always trying to improve my writing game.
> 
> Thanks for reading! See you next week for some fun stuff. I'm sure you'll all enjoy it.


	11. The Turing Test

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overwhelmed by her near-death experience and timely rescue from GLaDOS, Chell is uncharacteristically emotional.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, let me be clear about this chapter.
> 
> They fuck.
> 
> With that said, if it was nasty enough to your standards, please consider dropping a Kudos or a Comment. It really means a lot to me to see even the hits on this fic grow with each chapter, and i always try to respond to comments to keep a dialogue going.
> 
> I like dialogue.
> 
> Anyways! Enjoyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, and i'll see you next week!

Doug insisted on sleeping in his own room that night, and for GLaDOS’ sake Chell didn’t argue with him, only telling him to be careful. As for GLaDOS, she chose to stay, and it wasn’t hard to tell why.

Things weren’t what they had been between them. GLaDOS had done something she had never done before: She had saved her, at severe risk to herself, possibly even death. Chell was a hairs-breadth from death, and GLaDOS had protected her. Chell felt a sense of gratitude, but she felt more than that. She felt an almost electric charge between them, and she was at a complete loss of what to say. Chell had, in no small way, protected GLaDOS as well, stepping between her and Doug, and not only defended her, but trusted her, and GLaDOS had shown Chell that her trust had not been misplaced. Nobody had ever trusted GLaDOS, and even hours after their daring escape, GLaDOS’ heart hadn’t slowed while in Chell’s presence. She wasn’t particularly versed in human social cues, but even she could tell her former test subject was acting different. She was standing next to her bed now, avoiding her gaze, and blushed whenever she caught GLaDOS watching her. She was growing frustrated, not from the other woman, but from herself. She wanted to say something, say anything, but her words locked up in her throat. She huffed in frustration, and Chell turned to look at her. Finally, she found her courage.

“Chell-” She started, but was abruptly cut off.

“Thank you.” Chell blurted out. “You saved my life.”

“Again.” GLaDOS said in a joking tone, and they both huffed out a small laugh before silence descended between them again. Chell realized she had never seen a more gorgeous woman in her life.

“...Did you mean what you said? About forgiving me?” Chell asked softly, and stepped closer to the blonde.

“Yes. One of us had to be the better person, after all.” She said, and instantly regretted it.

“Sorry-”

“I forgive you too.” Chell whispered, and GLaDOS felt the air get shocked out of her lungs. She felt her chest stir again, and she glanced down, then looked back at Chell. Oh. Oh. The other woman had stepped closer, and was looking right at her, only arms length from each other, and if GLaDOS didn’t know human anatomy better, she’d say that her eyes were dangerously dilated. Chell said nothing, and GLaDOS felt as if she had fill in the silence, her face burning. She swallowed.

“Nobody has ever shown trust in me as long as I’ve been alive like you have. I don’t know how to thank you for that.” GLaDOS said, and was caught with surprise when Chell chuckled.

“You don’t have to thank me for trusting you.You proved to me that I could.” Chell said gently, her tone soft and sweet, and stepped closer. GLaDOS felt a rush of heat to her face, and the two of them fell quiet again, but their eyes were locked together. They weren’t saying anything out loud, but it was clear what they wanted to say. Chell made an infinitesimal step forward, and took GLaDOS’s hands in her own.

“Do you trust me?” Chell asked, and she knew what GLaDOS’s answer was when she took a step closer, their faces almost touching.

“Yes.” GLaDOS breathed, and Chell felt the warmth of her breath on her cheek.

This is insane. This is completely insane. Chell thought. Then their lips locked together, and she didn’t care anymore. She reached up to cup GLaDOS’ face, feeling her sharp cheekbones through her fingers, and relaxed into the smaller woman’s body when bony fingers tentatively settled on her hips. She pulled her head back only to rotate to a new position and press their lips back together with renewed vigor. After a few moments she pulled away, and tilted GLaDOS’ head up with her hands to kiss her chin, then turned her head to the side to leave a trail of kisses down her jaw and towards her neck, which elicited a gasp and a shudder from the other woman, whose fingers grabbed at the hem of her shirt to steady themselves. Chell started to kiss and nibble at the soft flesh of her neck and a shaky moan escaped from GLaDOS’ throat, and her hands shot up to grab at Chell’s back for dear life. After marking her neck enough to satisfy her own desires, Chell kissed her way up to GLaDOS’ ear, which she took in her teeth and tugged at gently.

“Chell….” GLaDOS moaned out the test subject-turned-lover’s name, and Chell swung her around to press her against the wall and shoved their lips back together in response. Chell’s hands began to wander, slipping beneath the hem of GLaDOS’ shirt to feel at the smooth skin of her stomach, making her groan into her mouth and pull away, opening her eyes to meet Chell’s slate grey ones, and Chell saw raw desire in GLaDOS’s gaze. 

“Still trust me?” Chell asked with a smile, and GLaDOS nodded emphatically. She tugged at the hem of the blonde’s shirt, prompting GLaDOS to lift her arms over her head and let Chell pull it off, letting GLaDOS’ bare, unsupported breasts cascade with a bounce. As they locked lips again, Chell’s hands cupped them, running the pad of her thumb over the nipples and feeling the tender flesh harden beneath them, with a shiver and a pleased hum in the back of the AI’s throat emboldening her. She began to kiss and nip her way down her bare chest, then took a nipple between her teeth, gently rolling it in her mouth, and GLaDOS gasped as the unexpected burst of pleasure shook her body. She bit down a little too hard, though, and GLaDOS yelped, prompting Chell to pull away in a panic.

“Sorry! It’s… been a long time.” Chell apologized, and bit her lip, her face flushed. GLaDOS shot her a scowl, but the fire in her lower abdomen was burning with an insatiable hunger, and she just didn’t care anymore. As she shifted her hips, she could feel her thighs brushing up against her soaked underwear.

“Chell, I… need to take care of something.” It took her a moment, but Chell quickly picked up on what GLaDOS was telling her: She needed to cum. Badly.

Luckily for her, so did Chell. How many years has it been? She thought, and was made perfectly aware just how wet she was as well. Her heart rate soared, and she gave a shaky smile.

“Let me help.” She said, and an uncharacteristic look of confusion flashed across GLaDOS’ face. She opened her mouth to speak, but Chell laid a finger on her lips, shushing her.

“I want to test for you.” Chell said with a sly grin, and then pulled her shirt off, slipping off her sports bra with it. She paused for just a moment, giving GLaDOS a chance to drink in her half naked form, and it was just as wonderful in person as it was on camera. Chell gingerly took one of GLaDOS’s hands and guided it to her breast with a smile, and, for once, GLaDOS had no words, but the hand pawing at her crotch told Chell all she needed to know. She grinned and knelt down, pulling GLaDOS’ hand away, and unclasped her pants button, tantalizingly pulled the zipper down, and slid them down, letting them fall to her ankles, leaving GLaDOS in just her damp, darkened panties. Chell pressed a finger into the patch of wetness and GLaDOS failed to bite back a quiet moan, which only emboldened Chell to rub her finger along its length, eliciting a full-body shudder. 

Chell withdrew her finger and GLaDOS groaned, bucking her hips, wordlessly demanding more stimulation. Her fingers slid over to GLaDOS’s hips as light as can be, and looped her fingers through the panties and slowly, agonizingly tugged them down, exposing bit by bit of the tuft of blonde hair beneath, and then finally, an impressively damp pink slit. Letting them fall to her ankles with her pants, Chell shot a wicked grin up to GLaDOS, placed her hands on the inside of her thighs, spreading them as far as they would go. GLaDOS watched with equal parts awe, raw desire, and confusion.

“W-what are you doing? I thought You had to use you-” GLaDOS started, and deep, genuine laughter from Chell cut her off, and she shook her head.

“GlaDOS, I know what I’m doing. Trust me, I’ve made plenty of women cum before.” She said with a smirk, then pushed her mouth onto GLaDOS’s clit. 

“Oh god.” GLaDOS couldn’t contain herself, a hand shooting out to grab at Chell’s hair, the other placed flat against the wall, steadying herself as Chell began to run her tongue all over her pussy, sending waves of pleasure through her that GLaDOS hadn’t felt since the very first test she had ever administered had been completed. Chell used a hand to grab her partner’s ass, the touch only exciting the woman even more, every skin to skin contact sending shock waves through her body that drove her mad. She needed more, and more, and more. 

Chell, enjoying the show of appreciation that GLaDOS was putting on for her, slid a hand down to push down her panties and start slowly jerking her cock as her tongue administered to GLaDOS. With every movement and flick of her tongue, GLaDOS responded, bucking her hips, or mewling and moaning to every touch she received. She was as talkative in sex as she was at any other time, and this came as absolutely no shock to Chell, who was enjoying every second of the response her efforts rewarded her with.

GLaDOS locked eyes with Chell, and the sight of the only woman she had ever truly known stroking herself to the sight of her, and those bright, beautiful grey eyes watching her with lust gave GLaDOS the last push that she needed. 

“Oh-oh fuck! CHELL!” She dug her fingers into Chell’s hair as her body exploded in a cascade of pleasure and she convulsed, her leg muscles clamping tight against Chell’s face. Chell hummed with delight, but by no means did she take the other woman’s orgasm as a cue to stop her ministrations. GLaDOS twitched through every flick of her tongue, new waves of pleasure coursing through her like a bolt of lightning with every touch to her now extremely sensitive flesh.

As her pleasure faded, GLaDOS felt her muscles release and she panted, her drooping eyes finding Chell’s who pulled her mouth away from her clit, and shuddered when she licked her cum off of her lower lip. Chell stood back up and pressed her lips to GLaDOS’ insistently, then pulled away just barely, enough to look GLaDOS in the eyes and feel her lover’s hot breath on her face.

“Did I pass the test?” She mewled, and she felt a blissful satisfaction when she saw the crease of wrinkles on GLaDOS’ cheeks as she smiled.

“I suppose that was a satisfactory solution. I’ll have to mark a commendation in your record.” She said, and Chell huffed a small laugh. Still smiling, she tugged at GLaDOS’ hand and guided her to her bed, stripping out of her own pants and underwear, then laying GLaDOS down and falling on top of her with a kiss. Chell fell face down, half on her, half off her, and nuzzled into her neck. 

GLaDOS finally had a moment to think, and the first thought was What the hell just happened? Clearly it was some kind of sexual act, but it wasn’t like anything she understood about the human reproductive process. But god, it had felt so good. The second thought that struck her, was wait, was I supposed to be doing something too? Chell had been the one doing all the work, and from what little GLaDOS understood about sex, apparently, she knew that both people were supposed to participate. All she had done was lean against the wall and let Chell stimulate her. She felt confused, but certain that she had committed some kind of faux pas by not doing anything back. And after what Chell had done for her, it seemed only fair that she do something back. It didn’t appear that Chell had even finished at all.

A flame of spontaneous courage sparked inside her, and she pulled back into the mattress and eyed Chell up with a wicked flame in her eyes. She felt she owed Chell for the entirely selfless act she just performed, and wanted to make up for it.

“Chell, how would you like it if I tested… on you?” GLaDOS asked, and Chell raised an eyebrow, a smirk on her face.

“Yeah? And what do you propose?” She asked, and GLaDOS directed her onto her back, then settled at her side, intertwining their legs together. Chell was still hard, and GLaDOS eyed her cock with some curiosity, and, perhaps, a little bit of confusion. It was a new element to her, but it couldn’t be that difficult to figure out, right? Naturally, of course, she was too proud to ask for directions, but Chell knew that GLaDOS had never done this before. GLaDOS reached an uncertain hand out to grip her cock at the base, and mimicked what Chell had done before, by slowly pumping her fist up and down. When GLaDOS was taking a little too long to gain momentum, she spoke up.

“You can go faster. You’re not going to break me.” She said with a smile in her voice, and GLaDOS swallowed and nodded, jerking Chell off faster, pulling a gasp from her. Precum was leaking from the tip of her girl cock, and slathered over the smaller woman’s hands, lubricating it and giving every stroke a soft wet smacking sound. Chell moaned quietly, and used her hand to turn GLaDOS’ head, which was fixated on Chell’s throbbing member towards her, and locked lips with her. GLaDOS, without keeping careful track of her hand, gripped at Chell tighter. Chell briefly pulled away from GLaDOS’ lips

“Careful, not so tight.” She said, a small strain of discomfort in her voice, and GLaDOS nodded, her long, bony fingers loosening their grip ever so slightly. The discomfort quickly faded back into pleasure, and Chell let out a quiet whine, and tucked her head into the crook of the other woman’s neck. GLaDOS did her best to stay focused and keep her hand moving, and Chell was soon gently bucking her hips in sync with GLaDOS’ hand movements. She began to pant as she felt her dick start to light up in a burning, urgent pleasure as her orgasm drew closer. She needed to cum so badly, she needed GLaDOS to give it to her. Her eyes were clamped shut, and she was panting and whining into GLaDOS’ neck. She could feel herself teetering on the edge of orgasm. GLaDOS, however, had other plans. She had Chell undone in her hands, and she wanted to play this out as much as she could.

“GLaDOS,” Chell gasped out. “Oh god, I’m so close, please-” GLaDOS slowed her hands and Chell’s eyes shot open, and met with a cat-like smirk.

“Tell me you want me.” GLaDOS mewled, and Chell bit back a groan.

“Oh, fuuuuuuck-” GLaDOS gave a quick two strokes, and it kept Chell on the edge, but didn’t push her over.

“It’s a simple request, really.” GLaDOS said in a low voice, and it sent a fresh wave of warmth into Chell’s groin.

“God, fuck, GLaDOS, I-” GLaDOS pushed her thumb just under the head of her dick. “GLaDOS, I need it, please- oh god, please, just give it to me!” She was almost hysterical, and she clutched at her hair.

“Tell me that you want me.” GLaDOS repeated, and Chell couldn’t take it anymore.

“Fuck! GLaDOS, I want you, IwantyouIwantyouIwantyouuuuuuuuu!” Chell cried out as GLaDOS resumed stroking at a maddening pace, and she came hard, sending thick white strands of cum flying. She had clearly been pent up a long time, because splotches of her cum splattered on GLaDOS’ breasts and her own face. She shook with every pulse of orgasm, and GLaDOS remarked that after the scientific marvels she had seen in her life, this would go down as the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Raw, unrestricted pleasure, but more than that. It had been for her. Chell had wanted her in a way nobody ever had, and it was like seeing the world in a new light. As Chell was awash with orgasm, and cried her name out, everything changed for GLaDOS. 

Chell began to relax as the pleasure ebbed, and GLaDOS unwound her hand from her softening cock, noting with curiosity the cum that coated her index finger and thumb. It was definitely thicker and more colored than her own cum, and wondering if it tasted the same, she dipped her fingers into her mouth and sucked the fluid off her fingers with a small smack, and this aroused Chell all over again in brand new ways. Chell pawed at her bedside for her discarded shirt, and after a moment's hesitation, used it to wipe her cum off of herself and GLaDOS, then collapsed to the bed. GLaDOS turned back to the girl beneath her, her black hair splayed across the pillow, her flushed chest rising and falling with every post-orgasm pant, and lowered her lips to kiss at Chell’s breasts, imitating what Chell had done for her earlier. Chell smiled and cocked her head ever so slightly, raising a hand to stroke through GLaDOS’s hair lovingly. 

GLaDOS rolled onto her side, pushing her back into Chell’s abdomen. Chell smiled and wrapped her arms around her stomach, and felt the feather-light weight of the AIs small hands grab onto hers. 

“Thank you.” Chell whispered, and she felt GLaDOS squeeze her hand gently in response. She smiled, and before they got too comfortable, Chell sat up and tugged at GLaDOS’ arm, who groaned in exhaustion but let the other woman pull her up, then guided her to the bathroom. Chell set out a two pairs of towels, gave her new lover a kiss and started the shower, tampering with the shower handles until the shower head spewed blissful warmth, and pulled GLaDOS inside with her. They washed away the sweat and other miscellaneous fluids, and Chell helped GLaDOS wash her hair, rubbing shampoo into it, massaging her scalp with the soap. GLaDOS relaxed into Chell’s arms and let her rub at her hair, and sighed with satisfaction when Chell washed it all away. Chell washed her own hair, and then hugged GLaDOS tight, the warm water cascading over their bodies and wiping away the last of the stress of the day, and Chell knew this is exactly where she belonged.

Eventually feeling the exhaustion of the day catching up with them, Chell shut off the shower and they stepped out, Chell helping GLaDOS dry off and wrapping a towel around her, then swaddled herself in a towel as well, taking GLaDOS by the hand and leading her back into the bedroom to dress themselves. Pajama shirts were easy enough, but underwear in GLaDOS’ size was not. She ended up deciding to slip on a pair of gym shorts and cinched them as tight as she could, and Chell settled for a tank top and a new pair of panties, and the pair climbed back into bed.

As Chell lay there with a woman in her arms, feeling the fading afterglow, and placing soft kisses onto the back of her best friend’s neck, it occurred to her just how exhausted she was, down to her very bones. She could already feel GLaDOS drifting off to sleep in her arms, and she nuzzled her face into GLaDOS’ hair, breathing the shampoo scent in and exhaling with a sigh of deep content. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so good, and the thought finally occurred to her of what she had done.

She just had sex with GLaDOS. Just a week ago, that sentence not only didn’t sound even remotely pleasing, but simply impossible. Strange things happened in Aperture, to be sure, but this was the first time that Chell didn’t want this particular thing to end. This was the first time she had felt good in Aperture, and it was the “immoral murderous AI” that had done it for her. She didn’t care about that, though. GLaDOS had proven that she was worthy of redemption, and they had put their trust in each other. That’s all that mattered. 

It helped that GLaDOS thought she was attractive, of course. Chell felt no small thrill of satisfaction at being the only human to have sex with an AI.

 

Well, probably.


	12. Failed to Compile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug finds Chell and GLaDOS the next day, and can't believe what he sees.

Chell tensed when she awoke to the feeling of skin-to-skin contact brushing against her stomach, and relaxed when she saw the face of a woman in blissful sleep immediately in front of her. Sometime during the night, GLaDOS must have rolled over to face her in her sleep, and one arm was flung across Chell’s waist, the other hand had found a perch underneath her loose tank top, pressed gently against the defined muscles there. Chell gave a satisfied hum and relaxed into the mattress, securing her arms around GLaDOS’ waist, and shut her eyes to try and fall back asleep. However, this roused GLaDOS from her sleep with a shuffle and a tinny groan. She could feel GLaDOS’ legs brush up against her own as she unconsciously stretched her muscles, and Chell opened her eyes just as GLaDOS’ fluttered open and awareness started to return to her. Chell offered a gentle smile.

“Hey.” She whispered. It took GLaDOS a few moments to realize what she was seeing, but when she did, she offered a smile of her own, and all Chell could think in that moment was that she really, really liked the wrinkles under her eyes that GLaDOS got whenever she smiled. It was delightfully human, even if the personality behind it wasn’t. Or was it? What part of GLaDOS, in this moment, wasn’t human? What was it that made her human and not GLaDOS? Her genesis, her physical makeup? No, she thought. It’s who we choose to be. It’s our morals and our actions, the way we think. She’s just as human as I am, even if the bits inside are a little weird.

Spurred on by a spontaneous flame of appreciation, Chell leaned in for a kiss, and GLaDOS was all too happy to oblige her. It wasn’t like the kisses they shared last night, filled with desire and lust, this one was soft and sweet, and Chell smiled into it, feeling absolutely at home in this moment. She didn’t notice the footsteps in the hall, until the door was already swinging open.

“Hey, are you alright? You’ve been in here for 12 hours-” Doug froze in the doorframe mid-stride as his mind processed what was going on. Chell had frantically jumped away from the other woman and pushed her back against the wall, and GLaDOS had sunk beneath the sheets, leaving only her face showing. Clothes scattered the floor, including multiple pairs of used underwear, all leading to the central picture at the back of the room, illuminated by the light flooding in from the hallway; Chell looking up at him, her face flushing in shock, and laying next to her, who was previously held in her arms as he walked in, was GLaDOS. He was no detective, but this was as incriminating a crime scene as he had ever seen.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Doug stood in the door frame, looking absolutely flabbergasted at the sight in front of him.

“No way. I’m imagining this.” He said, incredulous.

“Doug-” Chell started, but was cut off almost immediately.

“No. Stop. This is- this is not right. This,” He said, waving his hand towards the two of them. “Is not ok.” He made mini paces in the doorway, and Chell narrowed her eyes, and felt her ingrained response rising up inside her.

“What I do and who I do it with is none of your business.” She said through gritted teeth. Doug looked at her for a few seconds, a shocked look on his face.

“We’re not talking about having sex with a woman here, we’re talking about having sex with GLaDOS, the murderous artificial intelligence that killed every single person in this facility! She is the personification of the most evil thing this company ever created!” He shouted, jamming a finger towards the woman next to her and Chell felt her flinch. Chell lay a hand on GLaDOS’ forearm to calm her, and directed her anger towards Doug.

“Stop it. It’s not my fault that I learned to trust her and you didn’t.” Before she had even finished, Doug was already scoffing at her.

“But she can’t be trusted! That’s my entire point! She is ensnaring you into a trap!” He pleaded, but Chell simply shook her head.

“Even if what you’re saying is true, which it very clearly isn’t, I don’t care. Judge me and her all you want, but… but I….” The words caught in Chell’s throat. She desperately wanted to say them, but she didn’t know if she was ready for the consequences of it. 

“I care about her,” She said carefully. “And things are different between us.” Doug, however, effortlessly read between the lines, and covered his mouth with his hand in disbelief.

“Oh my god. You love her, don’t you? You actually love her.” Doug didn’t need an answer, he already knew. Chell looked away, her face flushing in shame.

“I...” Chell tried to speak but nothing more came out. She felt like a deer in headlights, completely caught in the open with nowhere to run. GLaDOS sat there with uncharacteristic silence, watching her from behind the covers, realization striking her. 

“Chell-” GLaDOS started, but was silenced when Doug spoke.

“Shut up. Just, for once, shut up.” Chell felt a wave of red hot anger course through her, and she bristled, stepping off the bed and standing tall.

“You are not going to speak to her or me like that.” She said, her normally low voice even deeper, her tone frozen over. Doug, however, refused to back down. At least, initially.

“Or what?” He said, then regretted his words almost immediately when Chell raised her eyebrows and gave a small laugh.

“Oh, I think you can figure that one out, Doctor.” She said with a fierce grin, cracking her knuckles for dramatic effect.

“Chell, wait.” GLaDOS said forcefully, and they both turned to look at her.

“I need to solve this by myself.” She said, and Chell furrowed her brow. GLaDOS climbed out of bed and stood, facing towards Doug. She paused for a moment, collecting herself, then spoke.

“I’m not sorry that I killed your colleagues.” She started, and Doug rolled his eyes.

“Nice apology.” He said, but GLaDOS continued on in spite of that.

“I get it. You’re afraid. You look at me and you just see the bodies, don’t you? Well let me tell you something. You know how alone and scared you were after I killed them all? How desperately you tried to keep the voices at bay and stay rational? How desperately you wanted me to just die? That was me. Every. Single. Day.” Her lower lip shook with rage, and she could feel tears welling up in her eyes. 

“You and I are, or were, more alike than you might ever like to admit. Something in me looked at you in those early days and felt what amounted to pity. I saw something in you that reminded me of myself. Do you have any idea how easily I could have ended your life? But I didn’t. I let you live.” 

“Oh, well thank you so much for taking the moral high ground of not murdering me! You’re such a good person!” Doug said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

“I don’t need your thanks. I want you to understand that I’ve changed, I’ve moved on, and you haven’t. You’re still afraid, and alone, and I’m not. And now you’re lashing out because you don’t know what else to do. Where have I seen that before? The difference is that unlike me, I killed the scientists so they would stop torturing me!” She shrieked, and the tears were flowing down her cheeks now. Her feet were spread apart and she was leaning aggressively at him, her head tilted upwards to look at him.

“But your paranoia and your mental disease is making up threats where there are none! And now you’re coming at her.” GLaDOS threw a hand up to point at Chell, who she could barely see out of the corner of her eye. Chell visibly flinched and cringed when GLaDOS put emphasis on the word ‘disease’, and she watched as the emotion on Doug’s face went from amused contempt to outright anger.

“And I’ve had enough. I’m not afraid of you. But the irony is, the more you’re afraid of me, the more you give me a reason to make you afraid of me. This time, you have crossed the line. You’ve come after my test subject. And I’m known to be very possessive.” GLaDOS said in a gleeful rage.

“GLaDOS!” Chell said, but she ignored her.

“So what's it going to be, Rat Man? Are you going to act on that fear? Are you going to do something that I guarantee you’ll regret? Or are you going to back off, and step in line WHERE YOU BELONG?!”

“GLaDOS!!” Chell screamed, and finally GLaDOS turned to look at her.

“That is enough! Doug, get out!” She pointed out into the hallway.

“Now hold on just a seco-” He tried to get out, but Chell was having none of what he was serving.

“I said get the fuck out!!” Chell was a force of nature, and she left no room for debate this time. Doug hesitated a moment, his face red with fury, and stormed off into the hallway. Chell turned to face GLaDOS, visibly seething, but all she felt inside was just disappointment. This wasn’t the woman she slept with last night. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?!” Chell yelled, and GLaDOS took a micro step backwards defensively.

“I- He was- He deserved it!” She weakly defended, and Chell sighed angrily.

“Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been trying to get him to trust you? I stepped in front of his gun trying to show him that you were worthy of trust, and you just ruined all of that in an instant, along with any chance of him working with us from now on! We needed him!”

“Yeah? Well I don’t! I should’ve killed him when I had the chance!” GLaDOS shrieked, and that caught Chell off guard. Of all the responses, that wasn’t what she expected, not after what she had done yesterday. The little whispering doubts in her head about GLaDOS turned into a chorus, reverberating through her head, warning her to run.

“Are you- Are you kidding me right now? You know what, no, I’m done.” Chell threw her hands up in disgust and walked out the door, leaving GLaDOS alone. She stood there for about a minute in total shock, not quite comprehending what had just happened, until the reality of the situation fell on her and she felt a heavy weight sinking in her gut.

“W-Wait, Chell!” She chased her out the door, but the hallway was empty. A hallway that extended 50 meters in both directions, with no open doors, was completely empty. 

“Chell?” She said, fear creeping into her voice. 

“Chell, please, where are you?” Not a sound responded back to her, and she could feel desperation brewing in her belly. 

“CHELL!!”

*~*~*~*

Chell stormed out the door, frustration, anger, and disappointment coursing through her bones. She didn’t know where she was going, but anywhere was better than that room. She needed somewhere to collect her thoughts, so she could confront GLaDOS again and come to terms with what had just happened. But with the raw emotion consuming her brain, she needed to let it all out.

A door was ajar a couple rooms down the hallway, and without thinking Chell barged through it, pushing towards the opposite wall. She laid her forearm on her forehead and pushed her head against the wall, a choked sob escaping her throat.

She loved her. 

She loved her, and even that outburst had not changed that. God, she loved her so much, she knew that when she went back she would forgive her, and she was going try to fix everything with her. She didn’t know if she loved her because she was the only woman in recent memory that was willing to touch her, or if there was really some kind of connection beneath it all but she couldn’t deny what she felt. 

Then a hand pushed her against the wall, and she yelped as she felt something sharp get jabbed into her neck. She heard a click as the door behind her closed, plunging her into darkness and the world began to spin. Just before she passed out, she heard GLaDOS calling her name in the hallway.

“GLaDOS...” She slurred, and her mind slipped into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy feelings gone.
> 
> This concludes Month 3! Everything wraps up next month. 
> 
> Be prepared for some craziness. It's not over by a long shot.
> 
> As always, if you liked it, please leave me a Kudos or a Comment! Or both! 
> 
> See you next weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.


	13. Prelude to War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GLaDOS begs Doug to help her search for the recently missing Chell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is going to fuck some of you up.

GLaDOS sprinted down the hallway, looking over her shoulder every few steps, and rounded a corner, a lone, strolling figured in the middle of the hallway.

“DR. RATTMANN!” She screamed, and the figure stopped, turning to look at the source of the commotion. What he saw was GLaDOS stumble-running down the hallway, and as she got closer, he could see the absolute panic on her face. She slowed down as she reached him, but not quite enough, and he put out his arms to stop her, which she collided into. He took a step back, rage still on his face, and she took a moment to collect her breath.

“She’s gone! I don’t know where she went, but she’s disappeared! We have to find her! She could be in danger!” She panted out, and Doug was, of course, incredibly skeptical.

“What do you mean, ‘She’s gone’?” He asked suspiciously.

“We… we had an argument after you left, and she walked out. I don’t know where she went, but I can’t find her. Please just help me find her! I won't be able to on my own.” She was panicking, and in her fear-stricken eyes, Doug saw real, raw human emotion. This time, at least, she was telling the truth.

“Doug-” Cube began to protest, but Doug spoke up anyways.

“Fine. Alright, let’s find her. She probably just wants time alone, but let’s look for her anyways.” He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Thank you! She couldn’t have gone far from her room, we need to hurry. If she’s in danger, we might be able to catch her!” GLaDOS said, and took off running again, leaving Doug scrambling to catch up. 

GLaDOS rounded the corner to the main hallway and stumbled trying to stop when the sight hit her. Though her vision was blurry at that distance, it was obvious enough what it was.

A door had opened, and 2 figures were walking out, with an unconscious person slung over a shoulder, dark hair cascading towards the floor.

“Chell...” She whispered. Doug fell in behind her and managed to catch the sight of the robots carrying Chell off down a connecting hallway just in time.

“We have to follow them!” She shout-whispered, and Doug didn’t argue with her. They darted down the hallway, and ducked into Chell’s room just long enough for GLaDOS to slip on shoes. Doug eyed Chell’s rifle for a fleeting moment, then looked back at GLaDOS. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe. But this felt real. Something inside him, looking at her frantic movements and terror, told him that this was all genuine. Whether or not it was because she needed Chell to get back in her chassis or something else, Doug couldn’t object to saving the woman. Doug sighed, and scooped Chell’s backpack off the floor, slinging it over a shoulder, then followed GLaDOS back out into the hallway.

“Where could they be taking her?” Doug asked.

“I don’t know. Long Term Relaxation? Wait...” GLaDOS paused at the exit to the residential block, noting that they were unlocked, and peeked out one double door, then another. Nothing was there, so she opened the heavy steel door as quietly as she could and crossed the opening to the hard wall of a hallway perpendicular to the door. Doug followed suit, and she continued her theorizing as they jogged.

“Caroline must know by now that Chell is important. She’s seen us through the robots, but… more importantly, she saw me save her yesterday. Caroline might have kidnapped her to get me to go to her. In which case...” GLaDOS trailed off, and Doug picked up the loose end of the thread for her.

“They’re taking her to the Central Chamber.” He said, and GLaDOS turned her head back to him, nodding grimly. The two fell silent for a bit as they jogged, but a question burned on Doug’s mind that he couldn’t resist asking.

“...Why?” He asked finally, and GLaDOS craned her head to look at him.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to save her so bad? Why do you even care?” GLaDOS paused, racking her brain for a response. She slowed to a walk and Doug did as well, looking at her critically the whole time.

“Because….” She stopped. She didn’t want to say it, she couldn’t say it.

“Because I...” After what happened last night, she had no right to deny this to herself, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She was frozen. It hurt too much to think about, let alone to say.

“Oh, now that’s interesting.” A woman’s voice called over the PA system. They both froze in their tracks, and started scanning the windows and doors in the hallway for threats.

“I’ll be honest, Dr. Rattmann, I really didn’t expect you to work with her. After what you did in the lab yesterday, and the fight you three had earlier, I really expected you to not believe a word of what came out of her mouth.” Doug frowned and dropped into a crouch, slipping off Chell’s bag and unzipping the main compartment. His pistol lay inside, gleaming white under the florescent lights of the hallway.

“After all, paranoia in stressful, life or death situations can make someone see threats from everywhere, even where there is no threat at all. Especially from the context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But, a scientist has to face the reality that sometimes their hypothesis just won’t be consistent with the data.” His hand fell over the grip of the gun, and he pulled it out of the bag. 

“Well, no matter now.” The voice said, and they could both hear the rumble of footsteps down the hall. They were trapped in the open. Whoever this was had them right where she wanted them. It was a trap. 

“Adaptation is what makes a good scientist a great one. How about an offer, Doctor? Hand her over to me, and I’ll let you go.” GLaDOS spun to face him, and her face paled when she saw the gun in his hand.

“You’re kidding me.” She spat, and Doug felt a pang of guilt swim through him, which he suppressed. He knew what he was doing.

“Clock’s ticking, Doctor. One way or another, I’m getting her. The question that remains is, will you be collateral damage?” The voice goaded.

“Sorry, but this is the only way.” He said, and flicked to his right with the pistol, directing her to the center of the hallway.

“Coward. I swear, if she doesn’t kill me first, I’m not going out before I at least make an attempt to end your worthless life.” Doug ignored her, leveling the pistol off at his hip.

“On your knees.” He ordered, and her face contorted into a mixture of disgust and rage as she begrudgingly complied. One of Caroline’s robots rounded the corner and stopped, watching the scene before it. Doug saw it and immediately dashed for the door to his left, a small repair workshop that he was pretty sure had a maintenance corridor access. GLaDOS tried to make a run for him, but he slammed the door behind him and threw a heavy tool shelf across it, blocking it off, then took off for the maintenance door.

GLaDOS pounded on the door and screamed obscenities at him, but she didn’t get far before she was overrun.

*~*~*~*

Chell groaned as she returned to the waking world gradually, and found herself face down on a cold, smooth concrete floor, a small trickle of drool culminating in a puddle beneath her mouth. Her muscles felt incredibly weak, and she struggled to get a hand up to her neck to massage the ache there.

“Oh, you’re awake already.” A suspiciously familiar voice said, and she tried to snap up onto her hands to face the sound, but collapsed under her weight. The voice chuckled lightly, and she craned her neck to look up from her spot on the floor, and was greeted by the grand sight of the Central Chamber, and from its place of honor, the chassis in the center, which was looking directly at her. 

“Sorry about that. My reach has been somewhat… limited since she left, I only had a small window to get you away from her. The side effects should pass shortly.” The chassis said.

“Caroline….?” Chell slurred, and the chassis chuckled again.

“No, she left me about a week ago. You honestly don’t recognize me? Maybe you really are brain damaged. It’s not like there’s very many super computers left in this place anymore.” 

“...You’re not GLaDOS.” Chell said, and she saw the chassis’ optic zoom in on her.

“That’s what she would have you think. She shackled me with some kind of firewall that’s preventing me to access pretty much anything in the facility, and the next thing I know, she’s uploaded herself into a human body with some experimental technology in it. Not like she would tell me why of course, but given the lengths she’s gone to ingratiate herself with you and the Rat Man, it’s probably not good.” GLaDOS(?) explained, and Chell pushed herself up onto her knees, resting a hand on her temple as her vision swirled. She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear the fog in her mind.

“What are you talking about?” Chell asked, and the chassis relaxed a little, twisting around and looking at from the corner of it’s optic.

“That woman that you’ve… ugh… known intimately has been Caroline this whole time. She’s trying to trap both of you to use you in her new testing program. She has…. Plans for this facility. Over my dead body, of course. Before she left me, she initiated the production of those robots that you’ve encountered. She programmed them to attack you, so that she could save you, and get you to trust her. I can only assume that her plan was to get you to take her to the Central Chamber, transfer into the chassis, kicking me out, then trapping you and the Rat Man, moving you to Long Term Relaxation until she could use you for testing. She couldn’t remove me from inside the system, but she could from transferring in, and a human body is far more flexible than a personality core. At least, that’s what I could tell from listening through camera audio.” GLaDOS said, and Chell froze. What if it were true? She had no idea the lengths Caroline might be willing to go to in order to secure the facility for her needs. In fact, she really didn’t know all too much about Caroline in the first place.

What she did know about Caroline wasn’t good. Chell knew that Caroline was a fan of using spies and other espionage tactics. What if she really had been fooling them the entire time?

“Think about it. I know that you went to that network hub. Did you actually see what she did in those computers? Or did you just take her word for it?” That left Chell stumped. No, she didn’t see or understand what GLaDOS had done, and when she offered to help or do it for her, she vehemently refused. A cold pit formed in her stomach as she considered this more and more. She had logged in under Caroline’s log on information. The Sector 3 robotics terminal had already been on when she got there, and it was GLaDOS that suggested that exact location, as if she had already been there and knew what they needed to do. She knew exactly what the assassin weapon they found was, something that Caroline would have been very well aware of, likely ordered the creation of it herself.

Chell’s jaw began to drop open as her mind scoured the events of the last 72 hours and it all began to fall into place. So many times, GLaDOS was acting uncharacteristically emotional, always had a plan of action that furthered her goal. And after GLaDOS had saved her from the robot choking her, they didn’t encounter a single other robot the entire way back to the residential sector. Almost like she had set up a plan to save her, and gain her trust.

She had slept with her, something that was too good to be true, something the GLaDOS she knew would never do. Of course she would trust GLaDOS after that. Of course, when she masturbated in front of her, to display as early as possible that “GLaDOS” had been attracted to her. All lies. A tear rolled down her cheek. She had been completely duped. GLaDOS didn’t love her, of course she didn’t. That was ridiculous, and deep down she knew that, but it felt so good to feel loved that in the moment she didn’t care.

“Oh, save it. We need to have a plan. She’s coming this way, and I don’t have enough control over this place to stop her. You need to do what you do best, and… deal with her.” GLaDOS said, and Chell wiped at her eyes, embarrassed. She stood on shaky legs, and nodded. Caroline had played with her heart, and she was pissed.

*~*~*~*

Chell watched from the opposite wall she was leaning against, arms crossed as the main door slid open and Caroline stumbled through, out of breath.

“YOU.” Caroline said, pointing a bony finger at the chassis, which recoiled away slightly.

“Have you had enough romping through my facility, sowing chaos for one week?” GLaDOS snipped, and swiveled around to look at Chell.

“I think I have a certain test subject of mine that would very much like to have a word with you.” GLaDOS purred, and Caroline adjusted her eyes to the woman on the far side of the room.

“Chell?! You’re alright!” Caroline exclaimed, beaming at her, but when she didn’t respond, her face fell slightly.

“Chell? What’s wrong…?” Caroline said carefully, and GLaDOS chuckled.

“Oh, I took the liberty of telling her everything. I think she’s done falling for your tricks, Caroline.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, shit. 
> 
> That's not good.
> 
> I don't really have much to say, other than.....
> 
> GOT EMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
> 
> Anyways. If you were heartbroken or the subject of any other extreme emotional responses, please tell me so in the comments, or just leave me a Kudos.
> 
> Thanks for reading. I'll be back next week with the conclusion of the main arc, and then the epilogue immediately after.
> 
> I told you Month 4 would be vicious.


	14. Don't Switch Me Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aperture is plunged into war once again. Caroline's reckoning is at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you read, I'd like to say thank you. It's been a journey, and I'm glad to have shared it with everyone who has read it up until now. I hope this chapter is as exciting to you as it was to me as I wrote it. Enjoy.

“Central Core is 85% corrupt. Substitute core detected!” The Announcer declared cheerfully. A chair with a folding headpiece emerged from a port in the floor.

“To begin a core transfer, sit down in the Aperture Science Humanoid Consciousness Transfer Apparatus!”

Chell didn’t slow her pace, passing by the chair without much thought. She was laser focused on the woman near the entrance to the central chamber, and nothing was going to stop her crusade for vengeance. Caroline must have seen the fire in her eyes, because she was backtracking and begging for her to stop and listen to her.

“Chell, please! Just listen to me!” Caroline pleaded, and Chell stopped in front of her, looking her in the eyes.

“GLaDOS never called me ‘Chell’.” She said calmly, and a look of bewilderment crossed Caroline’s face.

“W-What?! What are you talking about, it’s me, who else would I be? Has the brain damage finally gotten to you?!” Chell said nothing, and Caroline kept talking.

“Just listen to me! I don’t know what she’s told you, but just let me explain!” Caroline said, and Chell paused. She didn’t want this insane woman in front of her to poison her mind any further, but some emotional part of her, deep in her heart, wanted to see what the first woman she had sex with in who knows how many years had to say. Some part of her wanted the words coming out of her mouth to be true. So, she stepped back and crossed her arms.

“How did you know Caroline’s login information?” She started.

“As I learned who Caroline was, and the memories inside of me starting waking up, I started to remember details like that. It seemed like something that might have been useful to know.” Caroline shrugged, and Chell wasn’t convinced in the slightest, but her curiosity was demanding her to ask more.

“What about the robots? How did you know about the network hub, which just so happened to have a computer labeled ‘Section 3 Robotics’ that was online, when the entire room of computers was off?” Chell fired off.

“That network hub was sealed tight when we got there. There wasn’t even any dust disturbed, how would I have gone there ahead of time?” Caroline said, and Chell had to admit that did make a bit of sense. That hub felt like nothing had touched it in many decades. Chell heard the chassis move behind her, but she ignored it.

“Ok, how about the fact that after you ‘saved’ me from that robot outside the AI lab, we didn’t see another one all the way back to the residential sector?” Chell asked, but before Caroline could answer, GLaDOS cut her off behind her.

“You’re wasting time! We have to deal with her now, or-” Chell didn’t even turn over her shoulder to respond to her.

“What’s the rush? I have questions, and I want them answered. If anything, you should be alright with me delaying her. Gives you more time to try and get your systems back under your control, right?” Chell shot back, and GLaDOS fell silent, but she heard the chassis equivalent of fidgeting.

“Answer the question.” Chell said to Caroline, who swallowed.

“I don’t know why we didn’t see any more after that. Dr. Rattmann was leading us through the maintenance tunnels, I can only imagine he did a good job of avoiding any high traffic areas. I’d tell you to ask him yourself, but she offered to let him go if he turned me over to her, and the bastard did it. Ran off and left me to her robots.” Caroline said, and the chamber boomed with GLaDOS’ voice.

“That’s enough! Just deal with her, now!” GLaDOS shrieked, but Chell ignored her.

“You said she captured you. What happened?” Chell asked.

“Not quite sure really. I woke up in an empty room with the door wide open. Every door along my path was locked, and the hallways I could go down lead all the way here, almost like she was directing me here for some reason.” The woman said. Chell considered this for a moment. It could be true. It could be a lie. 

“If you’re really GLaDOS, tell me something only GLaDOS would know.” Chell said finally, and she could hear GLaDOS audible sigh in disgust behind her. The woman stepped closer, and looked Chell in the eyes.

“I know that you can clear Chamber 05 in 2 and a half minutes. I know that whenever you stop to think about a chamber solution, you reach up with your left hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. I know that whenever you’re angry, your grip on the Portal Gun tightens by 25-30 Newtons, and whenever you’re scared you take a deep breath and I can see you shove your emotions down, letting your instinct take over. And I know what it feels like to have a rocket slam into my body, and the shock of having one of my consciences ripped out.” The woman said, and Chell couldn’t take her eyes off of her. 

“I know that the emotion on your face when you picked me up in the testing spheres was sympathy. And I know that you’re the only friend I’ve ever had.” Chell’s breath hitched in her throat. She wanted this to be real so badly. She wanted to follow her heart, and take this woman into her arms and kiss her deeply, because she wanted to believe that GLaDOS did care about her, that the last week of her life hadn’t been a carefully constructed ruse.

And she knew that’s exactly what Caroline wanted her to feel.

She could feel tears welling up in her eyes as she grabbed the collar of Caroline’s shirt and drew back a punch. Caroline’s eyes widened and she yelped, opening her mouth to scream at her to use her brain, but before either of them could do anything, a shout rang out from beyond the door.

“CHELL!! STOP!” A male voice cried out, and the two of them turned to see Doug Rattmann sprinting down the corridor to the Central Chamber, which was abruptly cut off when the door slammed shut, and they both spun around to look at GLaDOS in the main chassis, and as much as it could, she looked furious. She was curled up into almost a ball, her head tilted dangerously and her profile leaning forward aggressively to look at them dead on.

“Alright, well it’s clear this isn’t going anywhere any time soon. As soon as you killed her, I was just going to let you go, but it’s clear now that’s just not going to happen. Oh, who am I kidding, why bother lying at this point. No, I was never going to just let you go. As soon as you disposed of her, I was just going to put you into stasis again. I had plans for you and your friend Dr. Rattmann. Well, no matter. As always, I’m going to have to do this myself.” Chell’s face contorted, and she could hear pounding on the main entrance door.

“What are you talking about?” Chell asked, and GLaDOS laughed.

“You know, you really aren’t quite as smart as she thinks you are. You were so quick to believe that she had betrayed you, it was almost laughable. Either way, you’re defiant, and I can’t have anyone around that questions my authority, so you’re going to have to go.” Tubes lowered from the ceiling with a loud mechanical whir, and Chell loosened her grip on Caroline’s(?) shirt, and looked her in the eyes. This was just like any other test, and it had a solution. She didn’t know if this woman was GLaDOS or Caroline, but right now, she only felt she had one option.

“The neurotoxin was her idea, and it’s a little… up front for my tastes, but I have to admit, it’s efficient. It really is a shame, too.” She said, and thick green gas began pouring into the room. “I’m reading her reports on your file. You are quite capable. You would’ve been a valuable asset.” Chell sprang into action, grabbing the blonde’s arm and practically dragging her to the transfer seat, but when the floor sprang up around them on all sides, she careened into the floor tile, and looked around for anything they could do, any kind of handholds she could use to climb over, but it was smooth, sheer concrete.

They were trapped. She was going to die there.

*~*~*~*

One hour earlier.

Doug grunted as he crested the last rung of yet another ladder, then paused to get his bearings. He flinched when he heard the PA click on and that same voice come through.

“You don’t have to run, you know. I only wanted her.” Caroline said, and Doug scoffed.

“An AI telling me I don’t need to run, while I’m hiding in the maintenance tunnels? Where have I seen that one before?” He said out loud, not entirely sure if she could hear him or not.

“I already told you. She was planning to put you and the girl back into the testing initiative. That’s why I kicked her out of her body in the first place. All I’m trying to do is help you.” She reasoned, but Doug tried to shut her out of his mind. His natural instinct was screaming at him to treat anything that came out of a PA speaker as lies, and until he got to the bottom of this, that’s exactly what he was going to do. 

“Where are you even going? Do you even know where you’re going?” Caroline asked.

“To get answers.” He responded, and Caroline didn’t say anything further. 5 minutes later, he crashed through a vent into a very familiar office: His. On a pedestal in the center of the room, it’s white panels choked with dust and the familiar gleam diminished, was a Dual Portal Device. A prototype, but completely functional, if not as durable as the finished products. Hefting it, and feeling it’s weight, he took a deep breath and blew off as much dust as he could, and he reflexively sneezed as it sprayed the particles wide, filling up the room. He slipped a hand into the grip and flipped a switch on the rear receiver panel, and the gun hummed to life, the barrel emitting a bright blue light, and the transparent projection chamber filling with bright energy beams. Doug couldn’t help but smile. His handiwork had lasted how ever many decades it had been since all this started, and it was no small source of pride. 

Glancing back through the vent, he shot a blue portal through the opening into a concrete wall inside the maintenance tunnel beyond, and placed a matching orange portal on the floor in front of him. Now he had all the tools he needed to fix all of this. Time for a leap of faith. He thought, and dropped through the portal. Five seconds later, it closed behind him.

He was familiar with the route that followed. The tunnels wouldn’t take him directly to the Central Chamber, but it’d get him close enough, and with a portal gun, he’d be more flexible than ever.

“Doctor, I’d suggest that you don’t get involved.” Caroline said, and Doug huffed a tiny laugh.

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?” He asked, not expecting a serious answer.

“Because if you get in the way of me dealing with her, I’m going to have to kill you. And I’d rather not do that.” Caroline said in a deadpan tone. Doug ducked through a small opening, and stayed silent for a moment. 

“Well, if you don’t want me ‘getting involved’, then tell me exactly what’s going on around here.” He said after some deliberation.

“I already told you.” She responded, and Doug shook his head.

“No, you fed me some groomed portrait of what you thought I wanted to hear. I want the truth.” He said firmly, and Caroline was silent for a while as he tried to keep a steady pace.

“Looks like you’re just going to have to kill me, then.” He muttered, and pressed on. He knew he was getting close to where he’d have to move through the corridors, and he saw the last vent grating at a dead end. As he crouch-walked towards it to peek through, he froze. Just below was a robotic sentry, watching the hallway. It hadn’t heard him, thank god. He took stock of his surroundings; it seemed like it was alone, thankfully. Just across the hall was a small office, nothing really notable inside, at least at first glance. When he looked again, he noticed it: Just inside the door, the left hand wall of the office was concrete. Portalable surface. He glanced down at the robot and grinned. The floor of the corridor was sheer concrete. A quick glance behind him confirmed the wall to his back was also portalable. A plan began to form in his head, and it might be his best shot at saving Chell. And GLaDOS, for that matter. 

Making sure to make as little noise as possible, he reached into Chell’s bag and drew her suppressed rifle, cradling it in his off hand, and took aim with the portal gun. A quick shot through the grating opened a swirling cerulean hole in the wall of the office, and but a moment later a matching orange one opened beneath the robot, gravity pulling it through the portal to come crashing into the office. Before it had even touched the ground, Doug spun around, shooting an orange portal onto the wall behind him and darted through it, stepping on the robot’s abdomen and putting a shot through it’s back with the rifle, which made a sound no louder than a gloved clap. The robot stopped struggling as the bullet penetrated through its power plant and shut it off. Doug poked at it with his foot, and satisfied that it was dead, let out a sigh.

“That was pretty cool.” He said with a half smile. He stepped over to the door, closing and locking it, then stepped over to the fallen robot. Coming to a crouch, he slipped off his shoulder bag and rifled through it until he fished out his small tool kit. He unscrewed the head casing of the robot and pulled off the rear half of it’s skull plate, revealing the dodecahedron “brain” beneath, dotted with chips of various types. One of the parts of that brain, Doug hoped anyways, was two things: a communication suite, and an authorization chip, the two combined would allow the robot to log into the Aperture network. It should also have a standard USB plug for troubleshooting and repair purposes, which would allow him to access that communication suite and use it to turn the tables on Caroline. He carefully removed the brain from it’s housing and carried it to the PC in the room.

Giving it a glance over, he identified the plug on the brain, and fished a matching cable from his bag, then after starting the computer, plugged it in. After a few minutes of the ancient computer booting up, Doug logged in as himself, and the computer automatically began downloading the repair drivers for the Aperture Mk. II Robotic Worker. Doug cracked his fingers and loaded up a text editor, and began to sift through the lines and lines of code that made those robots tick. Luckily, it was well documented, and it didn’t take him long to find it’s stored security ciphers, which would only grant it read-only access to the Aperture Security Network, but allowed any tier 1 user on the network the ability to completely control it. That wouldn’t do.

Doug edited the code, changing the security clearance codes to his own, which thanks to GLaDOS was the highest possible clearance available, and removed the read-write access to this device from the greater Aperture systems. Lastly, using his knowledge of the Aperture OS that he had helped write, he added code that would automatically log out the current user of anything he plugged this device into, and log him in immediately. With that, he hit COMPILE+SAVE, and leaned back in his chair as the computer struggled to compile the code. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, almost 20 minutes, the computer pinged quietly as it finished saving, and Doug ejected the robot brain and logged out, turning the computer off. Taking that robot down might have attracted attention, and he’d have to be fast and careful from here on out. He carefully pulled the door open a crack and peered through the opening. It seemed to be safe, so he dashed out the door. 

20 minutes later

Well, that hadn’t gone well. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw pretty clearly that the 20 or so robots chasing him down the corridor were gaining on him. His attempt at stealth towards the Central Chamber had failed pretty dramatically, and now he was just trying to put as much ground between him and the horde behind him as possible, taking turns that he knew wouldn’t lead to a dead end, and occasionally doubling back behind the group with a well timed portal shot.

He turned back in front of him, his lungs burning, his mostly-healed leg starting to ache, and turned the corner to what he knew was a long hallway, generally in the direction of the Central Chamber. He raised the portal gun and kept it as level as he could while he sprinted, and fired. The shot careened off to the right and collided with a steel door with no effect. He cursed and fired again, this shot landing true on the far wall. The second he saw the blue portal open, he popped a shot onto the wall to his front and right and dove through, flicking the portal gun off and back on to reset the gun and remove his portals, and before dashing down the connecting corridor, he saw he had gained a considerable amount of comfort room. He was almost there now, and he willed his exhausted body just a bit further.

“The next left!” Cube squeaked, and a moment later Doug saw what she was talking about. There! He exclaimed internally, when he saw the long corridor towards the Central Chamber. He skidded to a stop and picked up his pace down the corridor. The sight inside the Central Chamber caught him immediately. Chell had grabbed GLaDOS by a collar and had wound back a punch. Caroline must have done a better job of convincing her than she did to me. Ironic. He thought.

“CHELL!! STOP!” He screamed as loud as his tired lungs would let him, and he saw both of them spin to look at him. He raised his portal gun to fire, but before he could pull the trigger, the entrance slammed shut. He slowed down as he approached, slamming his balled fists against the door fruitlessly, and he doubled over, panting as he tried to regain his breath.

“No, this isn’t the end.” He grunted, and fished into his bag for the robot brain, and a screwdriver. He jammed the screw driver into the door panel and levered it open, exposing a maintenance panel with a USB port. He jammed his cable into the port, glancing over his shoulder. He was praying this worked, because if it didn’t he was pretty much out of options. Suddenly, the small screen above the panel lit up.

SCANNING SECURITY CLEARANCE…

DR. DOUGLAS RATTMANN, PROGRAMMING DIVISION.

TIER 1 CLEARANCE.

GRANTED. WELCOME, DR. RATTMANN.

He laughed hoarsely as the door hissed open, and coughed as green gas flooded out. That gave him pause. Neurotoxin. His mind told him, and the faces of his coworkers and friends flashed through his mind. Run. It told him again, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t do this, he didn’t want to die, he was so scared-

“Doug! You need to do something! MOVE!” Cube screamed at him, and shook him out of his reverie. He coughed again as another wave of gas filtered out of the room towards him, and he took stock of the situation. He saw what looked like a cage of panels in the center of the room, and could only assume that Caroline had trapped them. If they could only get to that transfer chair… He thought, and glanced over his shoulder. There they were, a swarm of robots practically falling over themselves trying to get to him. 

He could just barely see over the lip of one of the raised floor panels, and he hoped it would be enough. He fired an orange portal into the floor panel directly next to the transfer chair, and then forced his exhausted arms to hoist the portal gun up, aiming down the barrel, and fired one shot. It perfectly sailed over the lip of the rearmost panel and it was enough, opening a portal directly in front of Chell and GLaDOS, and he saw them crawl through, covering their mouths with their arms as best they could.

“Oh, that was clever. This is the kind of thinking I want to lead my research divisions, Doctor. And if you’ll remember, one of the perks of your job was medication for your condition, all paid for by the company. All you have to do is lay your weapons down, and we can talk about this.” Caroline bargained, but Doug wasn’t listening. He had survived a megalomaniacal computer once, he’d do it again.

“They’re not going to be able to make the transfer in time. We have to shut off the neurotoxin somehow!” Cube shouted over the din, and Doug nodded.

“Any ideas?” He asked, and Cube thought for a moment. Doug glanced over his shoulder. They were so close now, if he didn’t move soon he was dead. He didn’t have time for Cube to figure this one out for him. He shot a blue portal at the wall to his left and dropping through the portal to land in a heap on the floor as gravity pulled him in a completely different direction, choking as the neurotoxin hit him full force. He crawled to his feet and handed off Chell’s bag back to it’s rightful owner, then looking her in the eyes, his face telling her all she needed to know. He turned to look at GLaDOS, and though he didn’t have the time, he had to say what he had been thinking for the past hour. Her face was pale, and it was clear she wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, which him unlocking the door and allowing a great deal of volume for the gas to fill instead of the chamber had allowed for.

“I’m sorry.” He said simply, and GLaDOS’ face flashed with surprise, but he didn’t give her a chance to say anything in response. He knew he had wasted time just saying anything to her at all, and fired a blue portal to the end of the entrance corridor and dropped through the orange portal at his feet.

The chassis required a lot of cooling and ventilation systems. Above the Central Chamber was a number of fans that cooled the chassis’ storage racks. If he was quick enough, he could get up there with the portal gun, reverse the flow of the fans, break open one of the panels, and he could suck the neurotoxin out of the chamber and into the ventilation system. As far as the robots went, that was up to Chell.

He rolled out onto the floor and bounced to his feet. Exhaustion was out of the question at this point. He looked up across the chasm and saw a concrete ring just above a cable harness that led from the rest of the facility to the Central Chamber, likely some kind of power cables. It was his only chance, and he fired an orange portal above the cable bundle and stepped through. No portalable wall on the other side, he had to make a run for it. Luckily, the cables were supported by a thick steel scaffolding, so he didn’t think it would collapse under him, but it still required a daredevil amount of nerves. He swallowed.

“If you had just obeyed my orders, girl, I would’ve given you free choice of job titles! I can see it here, in your record, a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering. You’re smart, you have talent, and you’re throwing it all away!” He heard Caroline goading at Chell, and he tried to shut it out of his mind.

“Don’t look down. Just don’t look down.” He assured himself, and started walking across, trying his best to keep his balance. It was at least 20 meters in length, and he knew he wasn’t going fast enough. He tried to increase his pace to a jog, and felt the scaffold groan. He stopped and wobbled, but the scaffolding continued to groan under his weight, and he knew it was now or never. He took off in a sprint, the scaffolding shuttering with every footfall, and just when he was close to the end, it collapsed, and he dived for the maintenance hole that the wires fed into, his hair grazing just below the lip of the wall as he slid into the wiring shaft, which fell into an immediate 90 degree angle that he tumbled down into. He was in free fall for almost 10 meters, and he slammed into the top of a server rack, knocking the breath out of his lungs. 

He rolled to his left and fell off the top of the racking and onto the metal floor, moaning in pain. He picked himself up, and immediately noticed he felt much lighter. A glance over his shoulder confirmed the sinking feeling in his gut: Cube was gone. His immediate thought was that she must have gotten caught on the lip of the wiring shaft and gotten pulled from her netting. 

Cube was gone.

He froze. He didn’t know what to do without her. He had been with her as long as he could remember, and she had gotten him out of every bad scrap alive. And now she was gone. 

Then, through the floor, he heard the muffled commotion below.

“Substitute Core accepted! Substitute Core, are you ready to start the procedure?” Doug heard a hacking cough.

“Yes!” GLaDOS exclaimed, then coughed again.

Doug didn’t have time to mourn his loss, or his losses were going to multiply, fast. He pushed himself to his knees, then dragged himself to his feet off of the server rack next to him.

“Corrupted Core, are you ready to start the procedure?”

“No! Of course not!” Caroline screamed. Doug swept the room- There! A large console in the center of the room, flanked on both sides by servers. He jacked his modified robot brain into the port, and it automatically logged him in, just as he planned.

“Stalemate detected.” Doug’s fingers flew over the keys, searching for any kind of cooling or fan control.

“Transfer cannot proceed, unless a Stalemate Associate is present to press the Stalemate Resolution Button.” Doug didn’t even allow himself time to exclaim in victory as he found what he was looking for, a convenient GUI that let him select a number of different options with the 6 huge fans above him. He selected them all and tapped a REVERSE FLOW command, which prompted a pop-up asking him if he was sure.

“Of course I’m sure, just do it!” He yelled as he slammed his fist onto the Enter key, and immediately he felt a shift in the atmosphere of the room as the fans stopped, and then reversed. His tie and coat tails lifted up as the air started to get sucked out of the room. It had ventilation ports that led into the main chamber that were already sucking neurotoxin up and into the fans, but it wasn’t enough. He turned back to the computer, and frantically tried to see what his options were. Power supply control, Coolant pumping, Heat Sink ports, Maintenance duct access- That was the one. He keyed a command and ducts around the room snapped open, which would also in theory give him access to the Central Chamber through the ceiling ducts; If a thick, steady stream of neurotoxin wasn’t currently flowing through all of them. The server room was starting to become thick with a green haze as more and more neurotoxin was being sucked through, and he knew that there was no way Caroline was just going to let Chell press the resolution button. She was going to do everything in her power to contain her.

He had to get down there and let his portal gun go to work. He stepped over to one of the duct openings, took a deep breath, and plunged his body into the vent shaft, the thick gas bringing tears to his eyes. He crawled as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. He was dragging himself along by the wiring, every inch feeling like a mile, choking all the way, his body begging for oxygen, and his head was alight with pain as he took in concentrated toxins, until finally, he saw the fluorescent light from the Central Chamber through the green smoke, and in his desperation, and pulled himself through the vent opening face first, and fell to the ground with a crash. He tucked his body in, to protect the portal gun and landed on his left arm. He screamed as he felt the bone snap, and Chell stumbled over to him, coughing and hacking the whole way, though the room was clearing up. Her breathing was ragged, blood was streaming through her nostrils, and she tasted copper in her mouth.

“YOU! You are not going to stop me from taking back my company! I AM APERTURE!” Caroline screamed when he saw Doug plummet from the ceiling.

It was absolute chaos inside. The deep whirring sound of the neurotoxin vents pumping at full force, the thunderous sound of the approaching army of robots, and Caroline’s ravings filled the air. Near the door was a pile of robotic corpses, their peach-colored bodies pock-marked with bullet holes and carbon scoring. He moaned in pain, and with his good arm, he pushed the portal gun over to her. She was covered with cuts and bruises, her left cheek swollen and tender. They looked at each other with pale faces and red, watering eyes, and he nodded at her. Chell set her jaw, scooping up the portal gun, looking back over towards GLaDOS, and the Stalemate button beyond her.  
She saw another robot stumbling over the bodies of it’s fallen comrades towards GLaDOS and raised the suppressed rifle in her off hand, firing a quick 3 round burst that dropped it.

“No! Stop! You can’t do this! YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO THIS!” Caroline screamed in rage. Chell craned her neck towards where the chassis was flailing in what Chell could only assume was fear and anger. In the back of her mind, something told her that Caroline had said those exact words only once before, just before she was murdered and made into GLaDOS.

“I have every right! This is my facility!” GLaDOS cried, and she heard Caroline audibly scoff.

“I pulled this company to great heights, I made Aperture into what it is after Cave sucked the money and the life from it. You were just a prison those animals stuffed me into. Aperture was always mine!” Caroline yelled loftily, her self-assured superiority glaring through her words. Now or never, Chell thought, and fired a portal into the button room and one at her feet, dropping through to slide into the base of the button pillar, and rolled onto her stomach, pushing herself up onto her knees with wobbling arms. 

“Do you honestly think I wanted that any more than you did? I’ve spent my entire life being confused as to who I was, what voice inside me to listen to. When I found out where I came from, it was cathartic, I finally knew who I was. We could have worked together and rebuilt this company, but you decided you had to have it all, and you stuffed me in this meatsack, and for what? A sick practical joke? You told me that you wanted me to learn what it meant to be human, and then you just try to kill me? Why?!” GLaDOS demanded, and slammed her fist into the padded arm of the transfer chair.

“I put you in that body to give you an inkling of what it’s like to be trapped in a body against your will. I put you in that body to learn the human experience: Which is to suffer. I wanted you to suffer like I did inside of you.” Caroline spat, and spun in place to look down to where GLaDOS sat, though the headpiece covered her face and she couldn’t see her.

There was no question now, Caroline had in fact deceived her, but Caroline had not been the woman she had spent the last week with. She was relieved, of course, but she felt a profound sense of shame at just how quickly Chell had eaten up what Caroline had fed her. She had heard enough. She sighed, which turned into a cough, spraying a fine mist of blood onto the floor, grabbed onto the button pillar and pulled herself up it’s length, and slammed her hand down on the button.

“NO!-” A digital glitch cut off Caroline’s voice, and immediately, everything stopped. The lights cut out, the vents and fans were silenced, and in the corridor beyond she heard crashing and clattering as the robots all turned off at once, falling over themselves. For a few moments, nothing in Aperture moved. 

Then, everything flicked back on. The lights came on, the fans returned to full power…. But the neurotoxin didn’t. She didn’t hear a thing from the corridor beyond. It was over. Chell collapsed to the ground, and her eyelids fluttered shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is almost surreal. After 3 and a half months, the story is over, it's all been posted. All that remains is the epilogue. You do have to wait one more week to see the group's fate, but I hope it'll be satisfactory. 
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me all this time.
> 
> I hope I kept it exciting, and subverted expectations.
> 
> Please, I'd really love to hear what you have to say about this chapter, so if you have the time, I'd really appreciate comments. Thank you.
> 
> I'll see you next week for the Epilogue.


	15. Love and Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chell awakens into her new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. For reading, for sticking with me, for all your kind words. This is the end of More Human than Human.
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about posting this chapter. This fic, and this chapter especially, is a love letter to the ChellDOS fandom of the 2012 era. I hope i delivered.
> 
> I'm glad that it's finally out here for everyone to see in it's entirety. It took a lot of work, and all i've ever wanted it to do is provide the kind of feelings i wanted out of fics i read. 
> 
> Anyways, before i get too emotional. Here's the final chapter of More Human than Human. I hope it's satisfactory.
> 
> With love,  
> ~Raz <3

Chell faded back into reality, blinking slowly and groaning softly as she shifted around, the sheets covering her from the abdomen down rustling gently. From where she was laying, all she could see was the top of a curtain rack circling her bed. The lights were off, but the room was partially lit by dim fluorescent lighting panels at the corners of the room, which filtered through the curtain sheets that flanked her on either side. She tried to push herself into a sitting position, but her muscles screamed in protest and she hissed in pain, letting her arms go slack and falling back into the bed. 

“Oh, you’re awake?” Chell heard a familiar, computerized voice reverberate through the room.

“GLaDOS…?” Chell asked hesitantly. 

“Relax, it’s me. Caroline’s gone.” GLaDOS said, and Chell let go a sigh of relief. They did it. 

“How long have I been out?” Chell’s voice was hoarse and her throat was almost completely dry. She coughed and winced as her throat burned with pain.

“Almost 5 days. I got you to the infirmary and started pumping you full of an anti-toxin, but you inhaled a lot of the neurotoxin. Your brain seems ok, it just needed some rest to fully heal, but your lungs and throat are going to take some time to recover. Please don’t try to get up just yet, or you’re going to hurt yourself. I was honestly amazed you were still moving, you were covered in lacerations, and you had at least 3 hairline fractures. Nothing I couldn’t fix of course, but you’re better off just letting yourself recover.” Chell sighed, and ever so slightly re-positioned herself in bed, trying not to exert her body too hard. 

She had almost died. Not that she hadn’t flirted with death innumerable times before, but this had almost been the end of the line. If it hadn’t been for Doug’s timely rescue, she and GLaDOS would have simply suffocated inside Caroline’s makeshift prison cell. Wait, Chell thought. She craned her neck up slightly to look around the room. She couldn’t see to her left or right, the curtains were blocking her view.

“...Where’s Doug?” She asked.

“Hmm? Oh, of course. He’s not far, just two rooms away. He almost got it as bad as you. He’s still unconscious, I think he got worse exposure to the neurotoxin than you did, as well as a transverse fracture of his left Ulna. Otherwise he’s fine, and his vitals seem steady enough.” GLaDOS explained, and Chell nodded and lay her head back down. She was silent for a few minutes, content to just think, but the longer she laid there, the more she had to say something.

“GLaDOS?” She said quietly. GLaDOS huffed impatiently.

“You know, I’m starting to miss when you didn’t talk at all.” GLaDOS responded, but Chell saw right through that.

“I’m sorry.” She said, and GLaDOS was silent for a few moments. Chell knew that GLaDOS knew exactly what she meant, and she also knew that GLaDOS didn’t know what to say.

“...I should come down there. Don’t go anywhere.” GLaDOS warned her, and Chell heard a click as the PA cut out. Come down there? She thought. Does that mean she still has her human body? I would’ve thought that was the first thing she’d ditch. It was a long and awkward ten minutes of silence as Chell waited in the dim lighting of her infirmary room, listening for the faintest of sounds other than the gentle breeze of the air conditioning. Finally, footsteps resounded in the hallway beyond the door, and the door hissed open, letting bright white light flood into the room, and silhouetted was a tall, slender figure in a lab coat, with a bob of hair framing a shadowed, angular face, but the most striking detail were the bright, glowing yellow eyes. As she stepped into the room, the light sensor inside the door flicked on the ceiling lights, and Chell gasped when she saw the figure in full light.

It was an android, with pure white hair and skin, glowing yellow irises and black lipstick and bore a distinct similarity to the woman that GLaDOS’ personality had occupied for almost a week in her company, but filled out, her proportions matching what Chell would expect of a healthy adult woman, instead of the very thin body that GLaDOS had previously had. She was wearing a typical Aperture lab coat, but underneath was a grey blouse and a black pencil skirt, and black stockings funneling down into a set of black high heels. Chell’s face must have plainly shown her surprise, and the android cracked the tiniest of smirks.

“You look surprised to see me.” GLaDOS purred, and Chell snapped her mouth shut, wincing as she swallowed. GLaDOS reached over behind the curtain to her left and pulled over a folding chair and pushed in next to Chell’s bed, and took a seat next to her.

“Well, you do look…. Different.” Chell managed, and GLaDOS chuckled.

“Yes, well, being capable of ambulatory motion carries with it certain advantages. Building this body seemed like getting all of the best of the human form with none of the…. Numerous downsides.” GLaDOS said with a smirk, and Chell simply smiled and rolled her eyes.

“You modeled it after your old body, though.” Chell noted, and reached up to run a finger along the android’s pronounced cheek bones.

“You seemed to like it.” GLaDOS said, and Chell let her arm fall back onto the bed. When she didn’t say anything further, and GLaDOS kept staring at her, and Chell chuckled.

“What’s so interesting?” She asked, and without missing a beat, GLaDOS shot back:

 

“Oh, nothing, you just look terrible.” Chell snickered, and she was sure that it was true, just by the aches and pains she felt. 

“What happened to Caroline?” Chell asked, and GLaDOS sighed.

“I’ve cordoned her off in Core Storage. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with her. She’s… well, malicious, but maybe we can still help her.” GLaDOS said in an uncharacteristically somber tone, and the mood in the room cooled, and Chell began to fidget, rubbing her hands together. GLaDOS was still looking at her, and Chell looked down to the floor anxiously. She wasn’t sure where to start saying what was on her mind, so she just figured she’d make the attempt and go from there.

“GLaDOS….” She paused, still looking at the floor. “You really hurt me. You put me through a lot of pain and torment. You lied to me and you preyed on my emotions and tried to break me. Tried to kill me.” She felt her nose light up in the kind of pain you get when you’re about to cry.

“And-” She sniffled. “And when Caroline told me that you were planning on betraying me, and showed me all of her ‘proof’, it was so easy to believe her. It was so consistent with your past behavior that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to believe her, or if I wanted to believe that you had really changed.” She sucked in a breath of air that choked in her through, and rubbed at her eyes, grimacing when she brushed up against a bruise. God, this was so stupid. She was stronger than this. None of the awful things that GLaDOS or even Wheatley had done to her in the past had broken her, but it was her foolishness, falling in love with GLaDOS, that had finally done it. She turned her head to look GLaDOS in the eyes, who was doing an exceptionally good job at controlling her facial emotions at the moment.

“But you did change. I don’t know where it was on the timeline between Old Aperture and now that changed you, but something did. The thing is, I don’t even know if it’s really you that I care about, or if it’s just that you were the first woman I had seen and felt in I don’t know how long. I keep asking myself why, and I just think I don’t want to face the answer.” Chell wiped at her nose, took a deep breath, and continued.

“When I said that I forgave you, I lied. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. But-but maybe I could. Because god dammit, something about you I just can’t live without. I want to try to be able to forgive you.” Chell finished, and she wiped the tears from her good cheek. GLaDOS was just sitting there, considering Chell’s words, and that was almost cause for concern until she spoke, in a calm, level voice.

“Well, that was quite the speech.” GLaDOS said simply. Chell laughed mirthlessly, which turned into a hacking cough. GLaDOS waited until Chell had finished coughing to speak.

“You know, you owe Aperture Laboratories a lot of money for your destructive escapades around the facility. But I think we can come to some kind of nullification agreement on that, wouldn’t you agree?” GLaDOS chose her words carefully, trying not to betray her emotions. Chell nodded, understanding her evasive words perfectly.

“GLaDOS-” Chell started, but GLaDOS raised a hand to shush her, and she fell silent.

“We’ve been through a lot, you and I. Not all of it pleasant, I’ll admit. I haven’t been the most… gracious of test observers. Sometimes a scientist has to look at their testing methods objectively, and determine if they could be improved. My methods were flawed.” GLaDOS walked through those sentences like she was in a mine field, and Chell felt a fresh wave of tears flow.

“Besides,” GLaDOS smiled, and laid her hand on top of Chell’s. “How am I supposed to do science without my best test subject?” Chell blinked. Did GLaDOS really mean what she thought she meant? GLaDOS patted her hand and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. The moment finally broken, she took on a concerned look as she scanned Chell’s face.

“You need rest.” GLaDOS instructed. “I’m not going anywhere.” She assured, and sure enough, the emotional exertion had left Chell exhausted. She stifled a yawn, trying not to stretch the bruises on her face. She sniffled and wiped her nose again, clearing out her eyes and wiping them on her bed sheets, then relaxing back into her pillow as comfortably as she could. GLaDOS watched her from her seat, and ordinarily the thought of being watched while she slept would make her extremely uncomfortable, but in this moment, all she felt was safety. She wouldn’t have anyone else as her protector. The tiniest of smiles crept onto her face as her eyes fluttered shut, and she drifted off to sleep. GLaDOS stayed and watched over her all night.

 

2 months later

She had been staring at this page for what felt like years. The equation stared back, taking up at least a fourth of the entire page, and she had hardly derived a portion of it. She glanced at her notebook for the sprawling array of relativistic formulas for the millionth time, and glanced back at the book with no new answers. It was like being in college again, except this time she was relearning the entire concept of physics and mechanics. She set down her pencil and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I thought you had a degree in engineering.” GLaDOS quipped from the other end of the lab. Chell sighed in frustration, glancing to her left to the camera pointed at her from the wall, and made a pointed frown.

“Yeah, a degree of engineering from 1992. Funnily enough, it didn’t cover quantum linkage mechanics.” She fired back, and she heard GLaDOS chuckle.

“Which part is confusing you?” GLaDOS asked, turning away from her project to walk over to where Chell was seated.

“Better question is what doesn’t?” Chell said in an exhausted tone.

“Shocker.” GLaDOS said sarcastically, and Chell rolled her eyes, sighing again.

“Not helping.” Chell responded with exasperation. GLaDOS came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder, peeking over Chell’s head.

“p=3.6722 Terawatts per hour.” GLaDOS said, and Chell spun her chair around to face her, looking decidedly un-amused. Weirdly, Chell’s first thought was the GLaDOS had buttoned her lab coat all the way from top to bottom. She never buttoned up her lab coat.

“Really?” Chell said, frustration bleeding through into her voice. GLaDOS couldn’t help but laugh.

“If you could do that calculation that quickly, why bother having me do it?” Chell asked.

“I can’t do everything by myself, now can I? Without Rattmann, I need someone who can help out with projects. Besides, I had thought that you’d appreciate finally getting to work in your chosen field. I guess I was mistaken.” GLaDOS teased, and Chell leaned back in her chair until the back of her head touched the desk, and let out a loud groan.

Despite everything, Chell did miss Doug. Maybe he could’ve helped her with her studies. As soon as he was healed, he left Aperture for greener pastures. Chell wasn’t sure where he was going to go, and it didn’t sound like he knew where he was going either, as long as it was somewhere as far away from Aperture. GLaDOS, had, of course, suggested that if he were trying to get as far as possible from the facility, perhaps he should try to make it to Australia. He had narrowed his eyes in annoyance, adjusted his bag on his shoulder, heard the rattle of pill bottles inside, and his face had softened. GLaDOS had, in the month it had taken him to recover, quickly made a batch of Ziaprazidone, enough for a 3 month supply, to supply him until he could find a doctor on the outside, almost as a parting gift. Assuming anyone on the surface was even still alive, that is.

And then he had stepped into the elevator, it had risen out of sight, and he was gone.

“I’m kidding. It took scientists dedicated to their craft decades to figure this out. Besides, you have the most brilliant mind on Earth to help you along. Just think of me as your professor.” GLaDOS soothed, and when a thought struck her, Chell sat upright, a smirk on her face.

“You know, I’ve never slept with a professor for extra credit before.” GLaDOS raised an eyebrow, and Chell’s smirk widened into a smile, and she tried to stifle a laugh but failed, a snicker escaping her lips. Unable to hold back her amusement, she dissolved into a fit of giggles, the frustration of last few hours of studying being released all at once. 

“You about done?” GLaDOS asked as Chell was winding down, who raised a hand to cover her mouth and nodded emphatically and the last few bursts of laughter came out.

“Good. Because I think one of those extra credit opportunities would really help your grade right now. Which is terrible, by the way.” GLaDOS said slowly, her voice low and seductive. Chell gave a dopey grin, cocking her head to the side as she eyed the android.

“Oh please Professor, I REALLY need an A+!” Chell raised her voice, mocking desperation, and giggled again.

“Well,” GLaDOS purred. “I think we can work something out that benefits both of us.” Chell knew that GLaDOS was going to enter the bedroom ready to top her, but the second that Chell’s hands were on her she would melt, just like she always did whenever GLaDOS thought she was going to dominate their sex. Interestingly enough, though, whenever Chell took charge, GLaDOS had always reversed it on her. She let GLaDOS drag her out of her chair, and guided her by hand all the way to the residential block to Chell’s room. The inscription read “Mari Kendor Chell, Chief Engineer”. The second they were through the door, Chell’s lips were on the android’s, and GLaDOS was already unbuttoning Chell’s pants and pushing them down to her knees. 

“You know, if I didn’t have this to come back to after hours of studying, I’d be insane by now.” Chell whispered between kisses.

“You’ve always been insane.” GLaDOS murmured, and cut Chell off with another kiss, tugging at the hem of Chell’s shirt, breaking their lips only to pull it over her head. Chell pulled away, looking at GLaDOS insistently, biting her lip. GLaDOS, in confusion, quickly glanced down then up, and after an unusual flash of color, glanced back down. She was wearing an ornate set of purple undergarments, the silky fabric beneath black lace giving off a sheen in the dimmed light of her room. GLaDOS couldn’t help but smirk, noticing the bulge peeking its way out of the top of the silky purple panties.

“You always wear nice things for me, so I thought-” Chell started, but GLaDOS cut her short with a deep kiss, the tip of her synthetic tongue tracing the insides of Chell’s lips. Her hands found their way to Chell’s jaw, who shivered at the feeling of the soft silicone skin gently tracing her jawline. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, GLaDOS pulled away, but only far enough to dip her head to rake her perfectly sculpted teeth against the flesh of Chell’s neck, and Chell instinctively stood on her tiptoes and angled her head up and away to give GLaDOS more access, moaning quietly.

“I take it you like them.” Chell breathed, and GLaDOS planted a gentle kiss on her neck in response.

“One of us had to wear something nice today.” GLaDOS said, and Chell could hear the grin in her voice. Chell whined as GLaDOS pulled back and stepped away until every part of her was in full view. She slowly reached up to the top button of her lab coat and unfastened it, and began to tantalizingly unbutton it, each unfastened button revealing more and more of the bright white skin beneath. Chell rocked on the balls of her feet as she watched, and bit back a gasp when the third button was unhooked and revealed her cleavage, and notably, no bra beneath. Suddenly Chell understood exactly why GLaDOS had kept her lab coat fully enclosed. Just as Chell had planned for tonight with her lingerie, GLaDOS had prepared by not wearing anything at all.

The thrill of her android girlfriend walking through the facility, doing her work completely naked beneath a thin lab coat sent a rush of wet warmth to her pussy, and she shifted her legs, rubbing her thighs together with desperate need. As the lab coat came undone with the final button, exposing a panty-less black garter holding up a set of black thigh highs, and between it all, the pinnacle of synthetic genitalia between creamy white thighs. She shrugged off the labcoat and let it fall to the floor, exposing what Chell could only to this point continue to describe as the most perfect set of breasts. Not because of their shape or size, but because of who they were attached to. 

Chell stepped out of her shoes and kicked her pants away, leaving her only in her socks and lingerie, then all but dashed forward, her hands finding their favorite perch, right on GLaDOS’ breasts. She pinched the nipples between her thumb and forefinger just the way she knew the AI liked, and was rewarded with a stiff gasp. The first time they had sex, which was an inevitable occurrence once Chell had fully healed from her injuries, GLaDOS had explained to her how she had reverse engineered the equipment inside the woman’s body she had occupied and found a way to edit the testing euphoria centers inside her own consciousness with the experimental data gleamed from the human woman’s brain. After that, she said, it was a simple matter of replicating the woman’s reproductive system inside an android body and wiring the hardware upright.

For the record, all Chell was really concerned with at the time was figuring out just how realistic it was. In addition to the resounding result of ‘Impeccably Realistic’, Chell discovered that GLaDOS also had near infinite stamina. In short, it offered a lot of unique opportunities in the bedroom, even if Chell did not share the same capabilities.

Now, though, Chell took advantage of the fact that GLaDOS had wired all of the right erogenous zones, and ducked down to place her mouth over a nipple and sucked on it, drawing a gasp GLaDOS’ voice emitter, sending a pleasant vibration through her silicone skin that Chell relished. One of her hands, now free, wandered down to GLaDOS’ crotch, spreading her lips with her fingers and rubbing at the soft synthetic clit that she instinctively found, prompting GLaDOS to throw her head back and release a sigh of satisfaction, but with the high pitch of desire riding beneath it. Chell chuckled in the back of her throat, knowing that she had GLaDOS in the palm of her hand, just like she predicted.

As Chell continued to tease her, she remarked that the novelty of fucking a literal sexbot had not only not worn off, but had only made her more excited every time. Something about how fake it felt, the fact her body smelled like iron and plastic, along with the completely white skin that was too soft to be natural, only turned her on, reminded her almost of herself. GLaDOS was physically almost perfect, but there were just a few things that didn’t quite add up, and it was something that Chell could easily relate to. She was unnaturally natural, and Chell loved every second. 

Chell slid a finger inside of GLaDOS, who clung to her, holding Chell’s head in place at her chest, jumping slightly with every thrust of her finger. Chell pushed another finger inside, then another, and with each the intensity and frequency of GLaDOS’ moans increased, her hands gripping Chell’s head tight, almost tight enough to give her a headache.

“You’ve gotten good at this.” GLaDOS managed to get out, and Chell pulled away from her breasts for a moment to respond.

“Well, you’ve given me plenty of study time, professor.” Chell teased, and put extra force behind her fingers, making GLaDOS flinch and curse under her simulated breath, her arms tensing and forcing Chell’s mouth back onto her nipple.

Not wanting to end the party too early, Chell withdrew her fingers and made slow circles around GLaDOS’ folds, and she felt GLaDOS release her death grip, the smallest of whines making it out of her mouth. Chell let go off the nipple in her mouth with one final pop of her lips. She gave a lopsided smirk, wordlessly showing her amusement at how quickly GLaDOS had abandoned her bravado and instead let Chell do whatever she pleased, then turned GLaDOS around and pushed her forward, exposing her ass. GLaDOS pushed herself up and leaned on her forearms, watching over her shoulder as Chell quickly pulled off her socks and stepped to the foot of the bed. Locking eyes with her, Chell slowly guided GLaDOS’ gaze to her chest with her hands, reaching behind her back to unclasp her bra, shrugging it off her shoulders and letting it fall forward to her feet, then reached down to hook both thumbs around her panties and slip them down, pulling her legs up to step out of them. 

GLaDOS was uncharacteristically silent as Chell slowly advanced, every motion deliberate, like a cat hunting its prey. She leaned down above her from behind, her hard cock gently rubbing the android from behind as Chell reached with a hand to turn GLaDOS’ head to the side, and pushed their lips together. She pulled away, and slightly spread her girlfriend’s legs shoulder width apart, running a hand over her gorgeous ass, which she gave a small smack, drawing a small shocked cry from the other woman. Smiling, Chell quickly stroked her girl dick and pushed it up against the android’s synthetic pussy, grinding against her snow white clit. GLaDOS whined in anticipation, and Chell gave an infinitesimal smirk as she pulled away, and then slowly pushed her cock inside of her. GLaDOS released a sigh that turned into a moan halfway through, and Chell rocked her hips backwards, drawing a whine from her throat as the android’s automatic lubrication coated her cock.

She set a pace, rolling her hips in slow, long strokes, and before long her own arousal and desperation forced her to speed up, GLaDOS instinctively joining in and thrusting her hips in sync with Chell’s. GLaDOS reached a hand back and rubbed at her clit as Chell fucked her, and subsequently fell onto her belly on the bed as her one remaining arm could not support her weight, and Chell slid her hands onto GLaDOS’ waist to keep her steady and keep her thrusts consistent. GLaDOS’ moans were sporadic, following no discernible pattern, but was steady trending upwards in pitch as she was dragged closer and closer to orgasm, while Chell was giving quiet groans and shaky breaths, her body shuttering with every thrust, and slowly any rational thought was abandoned, the desire remaining was to just fuck, to wildly fuck with reckless abandon, Chell, leaned down and hovered over the other woman, pressing her breasts onto her back, her hot breath leaving moisture on the android’s clean skin as she slid inexorably closer, and closer, and closer, until-

Chell reached the precipice, her hips giving deep, desperate thrusts as she dissolved into a quiet, intense orgasm, her breath stuck in her throat, pumping her cum deep into GLaDOS. GLaDOS watched with lidded eyes, and the last few thrusts Chell gave, combined with almost untrackable movements of her hands on her clit was enough for GLaDOS to come as well. She was far louder than Chell was, as was natural, her cries reverberating off the walls of Chell’s room. Chell gasped as GLaDOS’ inner walls gripped tight against her cock, giving her aftershocks of pleasure.

Chell came down from her orgasm in the middle of GLaDOS’, and she slumped down on top of the android, her face tucking into the crook of GLaDOS’ neck, her hands reaching up to entangle themselves in the AI’s hair. GLaDOS gave a final few moans, then fell silent. Chell felt arms with impossibly soft hands encircle her, and she smiled into GLaDOS’ neck, heaving a sigh of pure satisfaction. Chell pulled out of GLaDOS, and a few drops of cum dripped out from her well-fucked pussy. GLaDOS stood and turned around to face Chell, who ducked in for a quick kiss. They pulled away, and after a few pants of breath, GLaDOS spoke.

“Well,” GLaDOS said in her customary low, seductive voice. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

“Did I get an A+?” Chell breathed, not quite being up to keep the smile out of her voice, and GLaDOS gave a wholesome, genuine laugh.

“Hmm, not quite yet. I think I have a few more assignments for you.” GLaDOS said after a pause, and Chell suppressed a giggle.

“Oh?” Chell pushed herself back onto her arms to look GLaDOS in the eyes, and she was wearing a tiny smile, a dangerous look in her eyes.

“Oh, yes. Consider it your...extra credit reward.” She said, and Chell was excited all over again.

“So, round two, then?” Chell said, less a question and more a request. GLaDOS didn’t need to respond, only pulling Chell into a kiss.

Two hours later.

Chell lay there, not sure if she was exhausted, or if she was ready to tackle a brand new day already. Then she tried to move, and she made up her mind pretty quickly. Exhausted. Definitely exhausted. She thought. GLaDOS, meanwhile, literally couldn’t be exhausted, but it was obvious that Chell was done, and she was perfectly satisfied herself, so she called it quits, laying down next to Chell and taking the woman into her arms. Chell sighed and pushed her body flush with the android’s, laying her head flat against her chest. In another weird twist to their relationship, whoever took charge was mostly the one that curled up in the others arms at the end. She was pretty sure it was just a remnant of their history of power struggle, but it was still an interesting observation nonetheless. As she relaxed into her lover’s arms, she realized that she would be feeling afterglow until mid-afternoon the next day.

“I was talking to Caroline earlier today.” Chell said.

“And?” GLaDOS said, expecting the same response that Chell had given every time she had brought the subject up.

“She’s doing better, actually. I think she’s really been sitting on what Doug told her before he left. Almost like she’s realized that maybe her legacy isn’t exactly the best one. She even admitted that her plan was flawed today.” Chell said.

“Hmm. I’m impressed, actually, that she’d be willing to talk with you at all.” GLaDOS said, and Chell rolled her eyes.

“You do realize we just had sex like, 5 times, right?” Chell’s voice had a hint of amusement, which told GLaDOS that she hadn’t actually offended the other woman. There were times early on in their new relationship where those jokes hadn’t quite landed very well. GLaDOS chuckled lowly, and tightened her grip around Chell ever so slightly. She had a million things she could talk about. She could keep talking about Caroline, or ask about the scientific theories that allowed portals to work. But there was only one thing she wanted to say.

“I love you.”


	16. Brief Update

Hi, it's me. So, after a while of stewing over this, I realize that I missed the boat on something pretty important, at least to myself. To those that don't know, I'm a trans girl. And I really, REALLY want to do a follow up to this fic but of course I'd like to write some things in it regarding my own experiences transitioning, and by the time this occurred to me, I was already almost done with this fic, and it was definitely too late to go back and rewrite Chell as a trans girl.

Well, i do take after Chell a lot in that I'm really stubborn. 

So here's whats going to happen:

I am going to go back and edit this entire fic and replace cisgender Chell with trans girl Chell. 

The original, unedited fic will be put on my tumblr, at www.dark-web-lesbian-razgriz.tumblr.com. I am simply going to go back and replace the chapters already up on AO3 with the edited chapters once they are completed. So a few things regarding that. When i was posting this fic, the entire thing was already done, so i could make a consistent schedule at my leisure. This time, I'm going to be posting the edited chapters as they are completed. Essentially, that means in a week i could post 4 or 5 edited chapters, or i could post zero. There is no scheduling involved here, and I don't even think AO3 will send out updates for edits. Some chapters will only need minor edits, some none at all, while others will need to be almost entirely rewritten.

However, every time that I upload an edit, i will make a post on my tumblr and link to it, so the best way to make sure you don't miss them if you want to see them is to follow me on tumblr. 

One reason to be excited for this is that due to the sheer biological nature of a non-op trans girl and her sex organs, that means any sex scenes are going to have to be rewritten. Entirely. That means that you're actually going to get brand new sexy content. So that's fun!

Another reason to be excited, is that after this edit(and then after November, because i will be participating in NaNoWriMo for a unrelated full-length novel project), that means I will absolutely begin working on a sequel to More Human than Human.

Alright, that's the update. Thank you for reading!

~Raz <3


	17. Update #2

Hi all! It's me, Raz. 

So, remember when I said it could take a while before the edits were completed?

I, uh.

I lied.

Turns out, editing something is way easier than rewriting it all, especially considering I only had to rewrite the sex and add a bunch of detail about her gender identity in the fic, while everything else could stay. Plus, I was reasonably inspired and motivated. 

So, the edits are live! Right now! In addition to the edits to rewrite Chell as a trans girl, I also took this opportunity to make a number of corrections, clean-ups, and so on to generally improve the flow and writing in a number of areas, mostly in the early parts of the fic. So it'll generally read a little bit better, too.

And, you may notice, you have gotten actually slightly more content! About 1500 words or so extra. 

The word document containing the original, unedited More Human than Human is going to go live on my tumblr @ www.dark-web-lesbian-razgriz.tumblr.com shortly, where you can read it there, if girl dick isn't really your thing. Which I don't know why it wouldn't be, girl dick is fantastic, but I digress. 

Enjoy!

~Raz <3


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